Apple recently told us that SAP has now deployed tens of thousands of Macs in my line of business, so I met with SAP Vice President of Mobile Experiences Product Engineering Martin Lang to talk about Apple in the business, the switch to work combined and demand Employee’s Choice.
A quarter of SAP employees now use a Mac
Lang, who I talked to before, SAP says it currently supports 30,000 Macs – 3,500 of which run Apple Silicon. It started offering Macs as an option in 2008 and has seen The demand for machines has increased since then.
Today, the company offers employee selection to every new employee, as head of human resources at SAP Germany tweet here. “It’s really imperative that we attract the brightest and most creative talent and give them the tools they need to be their best,” Lang said. “Many of our developers require Mac specifically and feel more productive with it.”
SAP Macs are in a group that includes about 100,000 Windows clients, 70,000 iPhones, 17,500 iPads, and “about” 7,000 Android phones. He noted that these include SAP-managed laptops provided to contractors. “In SAP’s employee base, the Mac ratio is now around 25%,” he said.
Employee referrals are easy
SAP CEO confirmed the report that New employees are more likely to choose Apple computers: “For new hires, the Mac rate is currently higher than the general average, so new hires often require a Mac to be productive.”
He explains how his company attracts new employees. SAP provides an easy Mac setup experience, powered by Apple Business Manager and Jamf as an MDM. That means when employees need to sign up to use a Mac, all they need to do is enter their SAP credentials once and the system is set up, containing services, applications, and information. related access credentials.
Systems like this mean that “employees never have to authenticate with any other service – everything else is a single sign-on and all the software they need to be productive at SAP or installed automatically or available through Self Service,” Lang said.
Switch to remote control
When COVID-19 has changed everything, SAP already has a lot of mobile knowledge to rely on. Lang said.
Using a cloud service: SAP found that the complexity of a VPN was not suitable for remote device management, as it made the system too complex. The company still uses VPNs for specific, highly secure tasks, such as managing developer source code, but they’ve opted for solutions that ensure almost everything employees need to do are secure. on any internet connection.
Lang’s experience confirms the need for enterprise technology as a motivating factor, not an obstacle, to getting things done.
“Having the same user-centric and Apple-like mindset (Consumer-Simple) and ultimately the same device management platform (in our case Jamf) to manage Mac, iPhone and iPad (and Apple TV) bring a lot of synergy and ultimately reduce management costs. It also makes life easier for users because the concepts we use are the same across all Apple devices. Mac users at SAP often also have iPhones, and many (depending on role) also have iPads.”
Of course, with 100,000 Windows machines still in use, Microsoft’s support for Apple platforms was key to a successful Mac implementation at SAP. Lang is particularly positive about Microsoft’s decision to ensure Apple’s compatibility with Microsoft 365.
For all of that, the one thing that works less well is forcing the use of Windows hardware security tools on a Mac. “Mac is fundamentally another platform, and if companies are starting to make a choice, they will be advised to take advantage of the best tools in each platform by using the tools that are native to that platform.” that foundation,” he said.
Choice means choice
Should companies spread the gospel when it comes to platform choice? Lang doesn’t think so. “Passion for Apple is not the same as favoritism for Apple,” he said.
SAP has teams working to optimize and enhance the employee experience across all available platforms. “Choice means freedom to choose, and so our job is to tear down the walls, prejudices and limitations that stand in the way of freedom of choice.”
Reflecting on Apple’s success in entering the enterprise market over the past decade, Lang noted that, at least in terms of philosophy, the company’s essential mantra “think differently” has worked. with businesses undergoing rapid change.
Apple and digital transformation
As they adapted to Apple’s way of thinking, companies “started thinking differently and were more open to looking at cloud-based solutions, to make their enterprise software accessible from mobile devices, allowing for combined work or greater flexibility in terms of work time or location.”
It helps that Apple has done a lot to improve its platforms to support businesses. That means, for example, building things like enterprise-grade security, MDM APIs, Apple’s Sales Managerand supports single sign-on hardware implementations.
Another thing Apple has done well is to demonstrate its commitment to regular operating system updates for all of its devices by actually making them available. “This has a huge impact on TCO considerations at businesses with hundreds or even thousands of devices,” says Lang.
It also helps maintain consistency across device groups, especially since we now know that Apple will continue to support systems with updates for five years or more.
Digital natives are the workforce
NS the future of enterprise mobility is the future of business. All of us, especially new hires, are digital natives who are used to doing things with mobile devices.
However, it is not realistic for every business. Many businesses have a road ahead before they realize the full potential of mobility. “Aside from email and collaboration, we do almost nothing with our phones, and very few of us start getting push notifications at work for important or required actions or news. relevant,” Lang said.
As a result, many of the tasks that can be adapted for mobile devices have yet to make that trip. Purchase approvals, timesheets, even customer relationship management, can all benefit from more mobile integration, he says. “I believe it’s time to ‘work the way we live’ and utilize iPhones and iPads in our business lives just as many of us enjoy and use them in our personal lives. .”
What about Apple Silicon?
We all know Apple Silicon has come up with a big performance boost for Mac. “
“An eye-opening moment for me was when I gifted one of our best iOS developers, who was previously working with a 16” 32GB Intel i9 MacBook Pro, an 8GB MacBook Pro (for about a third) and he immediately transferred all of Lang speaking.
Why doesn’t he look back? “He says it’s about three times faster. He doesn’t have a bigger screen, but most of the time he works with an external monitor, and the performance gain is all it’s worth using the M1 for. .”
That’s a good anecdote, but SAP is also a software developer, which means it engages in formal performance testing for its business applications. That means it could provide enterprise-grade insight into what these new Macs can do. When the company started testing the first M1 Macs last year, the test teams “saw remarkable results,” says Lang:
“The team behind those tests say they have never tested a machine this fast, and this was with the Mac M1 released last year, not with the Mac M1Pro and Mac,” he said. The recently introduced M1Max.”
Although he had expected challenges in implementing hardware running an entirely new processor, these did not appear, giving Lang enough confidence to say: “I see no reason to do so. don’t implement them, except for very specific roles where people have to run Windows VM Macs. At SAP, we have very few such roles, but if that’s essential, a Mac M1 might not be the best choice.”
One argument many have made against Macs has to do with cost. The argument is that Macs are more expensive to buy in the first place. That may no longer be the case with M-series Macs.
“The entry-level 13-inch MacBook Air M1 is a great computer for many roles,” says Lang.
He notes that on all Macs that support M, Apple’s entry-level products offer the same levels of performance as Intel’s Macs. In other words, you can get at least as much performance as and possibly better from Apple’s entry-level machines. You get more profit for every dollar, and the cost of accessing the performance your business needs has been effectively reduced, he believes.
“We also see the Mac M1 run cheaper because there are more integrated features for iOS devices,” he said, noting new features like the Erase All Content button and the Settings button in macOS Monterey. The latter is invaluable when running a Mac remotely.
What’s next for enterprise mobility?
Lang thinks the next step will be to dive deeper into the mobility and user-focused approach you get with Apple’s technology. “We wanted to change the way we work and bring more of the magic we’re used to from Apple devices into the workplace,” he said.
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