IBM says Macs cost less than PCs

The jamf blog covers a presentation by Fletcher Previn, VP of Workplace as a Service at IBM:

In 2015, IBM let their employees decide – Windows or Mac. “The goal was to deliver a great employee choice program and strive to achieve the best Mac program,” Previn said. An emerging favorite meant the deployment of 30,000 Macs over the course of the year. But that number has grown. With more employees choosing Mac than ever before, the company now has 90,000 deployed (with only five admins supporting them), making it the largest Mac deployment on earth.

But isn’t it expensive, and doesn’t it overload IT? No. IBM found that not only do PCs drive twice the amount of support calls, they’re also three times more expensive. That’s right, depending on the model, IBM is saving anywhere from $273 – $543 per Mac compared to a PC, over a four-year lifespan.

IBM is now the biggest Mac user, so the business technology giant’s experience is important. By any standard 90,000 users is a significant sample size. The total cost of ownership matters when you measure users in tens of thousands.

And we’re talking here about the company that started the PC ball rolling 35 years ago. That must count for something too.