IBM's Pilot Program For Internal Use of Macs

geoffrobinson writes "Roughly Drafted has obtained internal IBM documents detailing the results of a small pilot program for internal use of Macs. Positive and negative results were detailed, but overall most participants were happy with their Mac experience. The pilot will be expanded this year. One advantage cited: less reliance on Windows. So it seems a mix of Macs, PCs, and Linux boxes are in IBM's future. Given the history between IBM and Microsoft, this is quite interesting."

Why wouldn't an engineer want a Mac?

Functional on the inside (Unix), functional on the outside (Mac OS).

Re:Why wouldn't an engineer want a Mac?

We have a whole building of Macs here using Active Directory. I won't say it's trouble-free, but it works fairly well.

Re:Why wouldn't an engineer want a Mac?

We have a whole building of Macs here using Active Directory. I won't say it's trouble-free, but it works fairly well.

We have a whole building full of Windows XP machines here using Active Directory. I won't say it's trouble-free, but...never mind.

Re:Why wouldn't an engineer want a Mac?

We have a bunch of DOS computers and each of them has a directory called ACTIVE. Works like a charm.

This shouldn't be a surprise!

Can you imagine the shocked faces seen around the world if it was announced that StuffHauler Inc, a long time Ford customer, was trying out GM brand vehicles? Me too, people would find it hard to believe!

Right.

In every other market it's normal to run trials to evaluate several options when making critical capital investment choices. It is only an inexplicable level of incompetence that means that most large companies don't do regular small scale tests of alternative solutions, just to keep tabs on them. Even if all you get out of it is some knowledge and possible a price break from a worried Microsoft it is still worth the time and money.

Software investment in a 100k user company will be upwards of $10m yet the contracts are let without even a thought of competitive tender or technical justification. If I let that through for any vendor on my normal projects I would be shit canned so fast my seat would still be warm when my replacement arrived.

Re:This shouldn't be a surprise!

But unlike most large companies, IBM isn't only a software customer. They're a vendor and consulting firm. This isn't news just because they're trying it in-house. The implications down the road are more IBM apps working natively on Macs and significant influence in migrating other companies to Mac desktops.

Re:This shouldn't be a surprise!

Posting as an AC because I have direct experience with IBM Global Services (their consulting/services/outsourcing division).

What IBM decides to use internally has NO bearing on what they try to get customers to use. They will still push IBM boxes with either Linux or Windows. This is just a pilot for internal use.

Re:This shouldn't be a surprise!

True, but if IBM's consultants start showing up at client offices with MacBook Pros instead of Thinkpads, the clients will notice, and start thinking "hey, if it works for IBM, maybe we should look at using Macs too"

Re:This shouldn't be a surprise!

Perhaps a better analogy would be a real one in the rental car business.

Until recently, Ford owned Hertz, and Hertz's fleet was entirely Ford Motor Company vehicles. Ford spun them off in 2005. Now Hertz is buying cars from GM, Hyundai and Toyota as well as Ford.

That probably started as a pilot program. It probably made the "Auto Rental Weekly News" or whatever as interesting. Everyone else yawned when it went out on the PR news wire from GM, Hyundai and Toyota.

In this case, IBM (a company that used to make laptops and desktops) sold off their laptop and desktop business. A couple years later, they started a pilot program to try laptops from another manufacturer than the one who bought their business unit. It made the news on Slashdot, and everyone else is going to yawn when Apple sends out the blurb on the PR news wire.

For Internal Application Only

I know Apple makes little "nano" iPods, but is it shipping actual Macintoshes small enough to be "used internally"? Byte-sized, even?

(*rimshot* - I'm here all weekend, folks - try the veal)

Re:For Internal Application Only

Little known fact:

The goatse guy actually started his career after he tried to use one of the original Mac portables internally.

A few things to note

IBM Research Watson is an entity unto itself. It has its own IT support infrastructure and runs according to its own rules. They rarely if ever want for funding.

IBM has been non-supporting Apple for years by allowing clients to run VMWare and similar tools to host the IBM apps that don't run natively.

IBM has been attempting to roll out an 'open' client on Linux for years. It's progressed very slowly, considering. It appears to lack funding and focus.

IBM is aware of the MS software licencing costs which is why there is some effort to rollout an OO based Lotus alternative to MS Office.

It doesn't serve anyone to replace MS licencing costs with Apple hardware costs. So the probability that IBM would roll out lots of expensive Apples is nil. More likely they will offer a client CD you can use to build your IBM standard client on Mac.

The most common client rolled out today is a Thinkpad T60 or T61.

Upgrade cycle

Note, though, that ignoring the hardware cost of a Windows box only is valid until the next hardware upgrade cycle.

I think IBM's hardware replacement cycle is 3 years (leases), so if the timing is right there may not be that much extra expense. They'll have to upgrade the hardware to run Vista anyway, and the extra hardware cost of a Mac would be marginal at the scale that IBM is talking about. In fact, since it's all eaten by IBM finance the actual cost really doesn't matter that much (blue dollars).

The question is if they got a productivity boost. It's unbelievably difficult to get those, so if they can show that they got a 4% or 6% boost in productivity by switching, that's more than worth the cost of the hardware/software. Scale that across IGS, and suddenly you've changed how well your whole company works.

The numbers are insignificant, but..

The numbers of testers may be insignificant compared to the IBMs whole workforce, but IBM is seeing the front line, and is adjusting itself.
Think about it, they have a lot of IT savvy folks, who know a thing or two about operating systems. And especially Unix/Linux. Why would those folks be pushing for their competitor's platform (Microsoft) as opposed to staying truly cross platform compatible.

The OS is becoming more irrelevant nowdays. Some folks at IBM are seeing that and adjusting accordingly.
(And saving money on CALs to boot...)

Powerbook 2400c

IBM has built Mac laptops before.

The Powerbook 2400c was made for Apple by IBM Japan.

I would assume that the group responsible ended up on the Lenovo side of the line, and I would love to see an Apple branded Thinkpad.

IBM and Apple, whodathunk it (PPC)

Yeah, it's not like IBM ever made processors for a Mac [com.com]... oh, wait...

What is more surprising is that they do this after Apple threw them over for Intel chips. Maybe it's one of those things where you get along better with yer Ex after the divorce than before.

To appropriate "Married with Children":
Peg: Would you rather have sex with A) Your wife...
Al: B!

where "your wife" = small values of Windows.

This is not really new

In 1991, I was friends with a girl whose father worked at IBM's Armonk facility. He and several other researchers had Mac systems for some kind of graphic/visual analysis research, mostly IIci [wikipedia.org] and IIfx [wikipedia.org] systems. He had problems with System 7 [wikipedia.org], I was a Mac guy, and I had reason to impress the girl. So when I said I could fix his Mac, he invited me up to Armonk, and I fixed it.

Didn't help much with the girl, but at least I got to visit a major IBM facility.

Re:This is not really new

"I was friends with a girl". Clearly this story is fabricated.

Re:This is not really new

"I was friends with a girl". Clearly this story is fabricated.

Actually, it's quite plausible. Nerds tend to hear "let's just be friends" quite frequently.

Why I enjoyed reading this post.

More and more companies are starting to realize the Microsoft conundrum.

1) How do we properly license upcoming products (Server 2008, SQL 2008, etc...)? Spend an eight hour session and you MAY figure it out.

2) Let's standardize on a document format (.doc). OK, here comes Office 2007 with (.docx). WTF is that, and it's the default when saving a new document. Shame on you Microsoft.

3) Vista promotion. It's better than XP, blah, blah, blah. No, it sucks, and was rushed to market. I use it (I'm forced) and very few of my network utilities work properly.

Hats off to IBM for making a bold but, intelligent decision.

Re:I thought it's a joke

It's really not that strange-- it's not like the old days were Microsoft's OS is talked about as running on "IBM compatible computers". These days, Apple hardware isn't that different from anyone else's, so it's just a question of which operating system they want to run. Since IBM is so tied to Linux/Unix these days, it shouldn't surprise anyone that they're considering moving away from Windows.

I think the more ironic thing is that they're probably considering the move because Macs have become more popular since moving from PowerPC architecture to Intel's chips. To spell out the irony a little bit more, IBM started considering using Apple's computers (partially) as a result of Apple ceasing to use IBM's chips.

Re:I thought it's a joke

Yet another interpretation is that IBM couldn't give a fsck about religion, but is aware of how much Microsoft licensing costs (even if you're IBM I'd imagine it's non-trivial).

Combine that with the fact that they're almost certainly using Notes (rather than Exchange) for calendaring and email, and suddenly Windows is a very expensive choice for little benefit.

Re:I thought it's a joke

As it is, IBM is a large multi-national corporation that is incapable of holding grudges.

You'd be surprised.

1) Individuals who may be in positions of power certainly can hold grudges.
2) Corporate culture is defined by the people in the company. Grudges held by old employees can infuse the corporate culture and wear off on new employees, reinforcing and propogating them.

Nothing that is blatantly unsound should get past the shareholders or its quarterly results fixated board, but when choosing between A and B when both are sound choices, the decision may come down to biases within the corporate culture.

Re:That's it! I've had it...

I am sick of everyone's smarmy afterglow about their switch to Mac after all the "terrible" experiences with PCs and Windows.

It is, however, very understandable. Users try OS X, realize some of the problems they've ben working around for years and no longer even think about are no longer problems. They get a bit crazy and try to understand why most people still use Windows and in the process can be very loquacious and annoying. It calms down after a few months or a year.

But as a network admin, I have better control and flexibilty with PCs and AD than any Mac I have handled, and I started my IT career on Macs. The latest OS for Mac is very pretty and whiz-bang, but getting integration into a predominantly Windows environment requires additional software purchases, extra configuration issues and more time/money overhead.

So you're saying your IT department standardized on solutions that locked you into one vendor, and now that users are demanding support for other vendors, your lack of foresight is biting you in the ass. Umm, maybe next time you should consider the future and flexibility as a feature so you don't have to purchase new software that handles the use case you did not consider.

Yes... you can access an smb share on Windows from a Mac, after you turn of digital signing and reduce your domain's security level.

It's called NFS. Any OS can use it. Why did you ignore the possibility of Mac or Linux or Solaris workstations when you picked a network file system?

Every Mac Lover I encounter has the same story, "I use it at home and it's so easy. I must use it in the office!" Douchebag!

Well why don't you just ask Microsoft to improve Windows. You're they're customer, surely any company you chose to do business with is responsive to your concerns as a customer, right? Oh wait, you chose to do business with an entire organization of douchbags you have repeatedly been convicted of crimes against their customers. Good choice there.

Looking at porn at home and synchronzing data from your laptop to a domain share for redundancy while having access to Group Policy management are NOT the same thing.

No they're not. Your job is to implement a solution for the latter that actually works for what your users want to do. You do realize IT is supposed to be about facilitating user needs, right?

And the next person who shows me how awesome Time Machine is has a three word answer from me: Volume Shadow Copy. Windows Server has had this feature since 2003.

Congratulations. You fundamentally misunderstood the ways in which Time Machine is innovative. I don't even use it, but I read the whitepaper. What kind of IT geek are you if you don't actually read up on new tech?

And any company worth its salt has good virus protection, spam blocking and border security in place.

What does this have to do with anything? Since when has border security stopped malware problems anyway? You seem about four to six years out of date when it comes to business security models.

Now here comes the Mac which can make use of none of those office level features.

The Mac can make use of plenty of those office level features, if you implemented a cross platform solution instead of locking yourself into one vendor. Man am I glad I haven't had to deal with vaguely incompetent IT people with Windows only skills for many years. Maybe you should take some courses at the community college or something.

5% market share does not good anti- virus make.

Maybe, maybe not. But whatever Apple has done, it works so far. Realistically, malware is not a problem for Macs at this time. In future that might change.

When there are enough of them out there, and bored German teenagers get busy, then let's talk about how secure Macs are.

Re:Roughly Drafted is not a credible source

Poke around the site for a few minutes and it will be come really clear that Roughly Drafted is just some moron running a Microsoft hate blog. Chances are these "documents" are either made up or exaggerated.

Can you cite a specific instance of Roughly Drafted posting fabricated documents in the past, or is this just an ad hominem attack?

Let's stick to numbers and press releases when we start talking about market share and company's official positions on operating systems, not the musings of some apple-phile.

Lets not.

Besides, we know that IBM quite plainly supports linux and unix. They're a top linux contributor:

How does IBM running a pilot program with OS X internally have anything to do with if they contribute to or support Linux?

Chances are much greater they'll be using linux internally more and more as time goes on, not relying on yet another proprietary OS vendor they have no influence over.

Since they're plainly in the process of doing this and since this was pointed out in the roughly drafted article, I don't see that your statement has any point.

They probably use about as many macs internally as microsoft does- and that's not an ironic statement.

They probably use fewer. What does that have to do with this article? It is about IBM testing Macs on their network (very useful for compatibility especially for their clients running mixed environments and possibly a sign of benefits for users of IBM solutions). It also talks about the preference for OS X over Windows by IBM employees. It's not surprising or anything, but that was the point stated, which you seem to have missed.