Mac adoption in the enterprise isn’t just about giving employees hardware options, according to Cisco CIO Fletcher Previn. It’s a business imperative — and many companies agree.
Previn spoke at this week’s Jamf Nation User Conference (JNUC), where he explained that migrating to Apple hardware boosts productivity, enhances security, and can trim ownership costs. And he has the evidence to back the claim up.
The former IBM CIO talked up many of the benefits of the platform following mass deployments there. Now in the same role at Cisco, his requirements have become even more security conscious — but the Apple benefits remain the same. The 12-month-old Mac@Cisco program gives 130,000 employees choice.
Previn was at JNUC to share details about Cisco’s Mac transition on the eve of Cisco’s announced takeover of cybersecurity specialist Splunk.
Cisco releases TCO tool for IT to make its own decisions
To arrive at some of these conclusions, Cisco built a tool to enumerate and assess differences between installed kit to get a credible cost of ownership figure. To help other businesses considering Mac adoption, Cisco also made its own Total Cost Ownership (TCO) Calculator available for Mac admins everywhere to download and use.
The tool will help them figure out the TCO for Mac and Windows end user computing devices such as laptops and desktops. The open-source application, built by a team with experience managing three huge enterprises, is available here.
“At Cisco, we are reimagining the Mac experience to support, engage, and empower employees to do their best work, and we appreciate offerings like Jamf Pro as we’ve rolled out our robust employee choice program to our global, hybrid workforce,” said Previn.
When given that choice, 60% of Cisco employees use a Mac today, with 24% switching to Mac from PC when they upgrade their devices. In addition to that, 88% of employees coming from companies Cisco acquires are already using Macs, he said.
Significant productivity benefits
That’s great from an employee choice point of view. At Cisco, team members using both a Mac and an iPhone had an 83% satisfaction rating with IT. It is clear that Mac adoption is growing.
But what benefits might other companies see by making the move? Previn shared Cisco data that showed sales teams using Macs outperform their PC counterparts, with 9.8% more deals created, 10.9% more bookings achieved, and 9.9% faster times to close a deal.
Software engineers generate nearly 11.5% more code when using a Mac, he said.
The existence of these benefits is not new. He identified similar benefits while leading the Mac transition at IBM, when he said: “Now, I don’t know if better employees want Macs, or giving Macs to employees makes them better. You got to be careful about cause and effect — but there seems to be a lot of corroborating evidence that says you want to have a choice program.”
The visible security benefits
Security is…
2023-09-23 18:00:03
Original from www.computerworld.com