IBM Open Sources Mac@IBM Code (9to5mac.com)

PolygamousRanchKid shares a report from 9to5Mac: At the Jamf Nation User Conference, IBM has announced that it is open sourcing its Mac@IBM provisioning code. The code being open-sourced offers IT departments the ability to gather additional information about their employees during macOS setup and allows employees to customize their enrollment by selecting apps or bundles of apps to install.

Back in 2015, IBM discussed how it went from zero to 30,000 Macs in six months. In 2016, IBM said Apple products were cheaper to manage when you looked at the entire life cycle: "IBM is saving a minimum of $265 (up to $535 depending on model) per Mac compared to a PC, over a 4-year lifespan. While the upfront workstation investment is lower for PCs, the residual value for Mac is higher The program's success has improved IBM's ability to attract and retain top talent -- a key advantage in today's competitive market."

Comments

Mac Support Cost about $0

[Anonymous Coward]

In my limited experience supporting my family, Mac support costs is approximately $0 per year. I bought Macs in order to enjoy peace and quiet and it worked. The odd little problem that surfaced, everyone were able to handle themselves. Their IT skill level? Accountant, teacher, construction worker, police constable, retired butcher...

Re:Mac Support Cost about $0

[Anonymous Coward]

Their IT skill level? Accountant, teacher, construction worker, police constable, retired butcher...

If you had Windows machines, that retired butcher's skills might come in handy when the inevitable frustrated user rage sets in.

OK this its opensource-ed config recipes only

[Anonymous Coward]

Applause to IBM opensource-ing their mac config recipes but is the recipes only. Appears to me that the actual runtime that executes and applies the config recipes is commercial proprietary config management & deployment suite called Jamf Pro.
See https://www.jamf.com/products/jamf-pro/
and https://github.com/IBM/mac-ibm-enrollment-app/

In light of config management via actual FOSS runtimes (Puppet/Chef/Ansible/Salt), this seems like a thinly veiled advert for Jamf Pro.

Re:OK this its opensource-ed config recipes only

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want a great alternative to Jamf Pro, look at Munki.
It was developed by Walt Disney Animation Studios and open sourced for everyone to use. It does just about everything that Jamf Pro does, with the added bonus of being open source and very well supported by the authors of the software and the community in general.

I'm going to have to take a look at IBM's framework and see how tightly it's tied to Jamf, or if I could drop Munki in at the back end instead.

Re:OK this its opensource-ed config recipes only

[torkus]

Very thinly veiled indeed.

With that said, Jamf is pretty awesome but needs to be customized. What IBM turned over is immensely helpful to medium and large enterprise for managing their Macs. I'm not a huge fan of several companies managing to advertise together in one post tho.

TBH anyone who manages Mac either has this kind of propaganda success story or reality. Yeah, your support costs are 'lower' because 1) you spent a lot of time and effort to build self-service infra from the ground up in an actual user-friendly way and 2) most of the support cost is pushed back on the end user.

Oh, your Mac crashed? Ok, check the knowledge base wiki that's maintained largely by other users. Ok, looks like you need to do an internet recovery, re-provision, restore your apps, restore your data, etc. It might be somewhat streamlined but the effort still exists. They're just having "not IT" people do it, typically with far less efficiency.

Apple isn't quite actively hostile to enterprise, but they certainly do not operate the same way enterprise expects from every other vendor ever.

Attract talent

[110010001000]

If people are joining your firm based on the the type of laptop they are issued, they aren't top talent.

Re:Attract talent

[guruevi]

On the other hand, if companies insist on using Windows even though you're a developer, I'm sure you wouldn't want to work there either.

Re:Attract talent

[sit1963nz]

Rubbish. When you are paying hundreds of thousands per year to top talent, you buy them what ever they are the most productive on.
Add on floor space, support staff, etc etc the cost can add up to be hundreds (even thousands) of dollars per hour to have that top talent
At that cost if you can save them just 1 minute per day by supplying them the computer and software they need, the computing costs work out to be zero over 4 years, paid for well and truely by time savings.

Re:Attract talent

[jeremyp]

Most professionals in other industries use the best gear they can get. Professional photographers generally have good cameras. Professional musicians have the best instruments they can afford. It amazes me that IT professionals, especially developers, are often supposed to put up with crappy hardware. This is the tool you use to do your work. Why wouldn't you insist on getting the best you can?

Re:Macs in use at IBM? For what?

[sit1963nz]

I work in a University.
Macs are used in Chemistry, Physics , Microbiology , Genetics , Bioinformatics, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, Computer science, Veterinary , etc etc etc.

But then again we have Linux, Windows too when wanted/required.

Re:Wonder if it's still true today? (Keyboard, etc

[torkus]

Macs are cheaper if you:
- Don't count the user's time to self-provision/install/configure
- Don't buy licenses for things commonly needed in enterprise (AV, HIDS, anti-malware, inventory, etc.
- Actually get residual value from your equipment
- Don't include the back end time spent keeping infra updated around apples quirky behaviors
- Don't count training time and lost productivity if you force people to ove over
- Don't count cost spent upgrading legacy infra/apps that 'just work' on a PC or IE
- Ignore several common security practices that most enterprise consider requirements (though I agree most of them are pretty stupid actually)

In the right environment, sure. In real enterprise where 5 different groups get to impose their will on any effort like this? Not so much.

Re:Mac Support Cost $0 just need to over pay hardw

[Jane Q. Public]

Reviews over the last 14 years or so show that you actually have to buy more expensive hardware to get the same performance from Windows.

Yes, they are expensive. But in most cases It Just Worksâ and you have top-of-the-line performance and lots less hassle.

Re:This is going to be good

[Bert64]

Technical people often prefer macs due to the unix underpinnings.. There are also quite a lot of companies that offer the choice between windows or mac but won't let you run linux, which pushes technical users towards the mac.

Re:Mac Support Cost $0 just need to over pay hardw

[Bert64]

The hardware is initially expensive, but also retains value better... A couple of year old macbook still fetches a decent price on ebay and the value only really decreases significantly once it can no longer run the latest osx.

Re:Wonder if it's still true today? (Keyboard, etc

[drinkypoo]

What strange times we live in when Big Blue once the ruthless king of PC desktops is buying Macs.

In these strange times, Macs are PC desktops.