Apple's Joint Venture Program - Thoughts?

[pikeje]

My organization is just starting with our mac deployment, with our JumpStart this Thursday/Friday and the first macs getting handed out on the 23rd! We bought directly from Apple who up-sold us on their JointVenture program as it wasn't too expensive and it seems to offer some great services.

Does anyone have experience with this service? Any suggestions or comments as we're at the starting line would be much appreciated.

Thanks for your time!

[adamcodega]

I also do business with my local Apple Store business team, the experience with them has been great but we didn't opt for Joint Venture. We have about 150 employees and each has their own Mac. It seems to require in store visits, and is more useful with a small team or many remote workers.

For my purpose, we signed for a Self Service Account which gives us access to the Global Service Exchange with technician training and diagnostics information. This also allows us to setup our own in house Apple Service Toolkit server, so we have access to the same testing and diagnostic tools that are used in store.

How many Macs are you looking to get?

[pikeje]

more useful with a small team or many remote workers.

This sums up where we're at right now. This first rollout will be 27 Macs but we're forecasting around 90 - 120 Macs by the end of the year. We actually will have a few remote employees and offices but for now the cities I've heard about have apple stores which would seem to be a huge help in servicing remote worker's machines.

[adamcodega]

Sounds pretty good.. I'd revisit in a year, ask Apple to provide info on what visits and training sessions people performed.

[pikeje]

Will do. Thanks for the advice!