Mac Hardware Support

[rafemoody]

Hello,

I work for a small enterprise company (4500 employees) and we are beginning to roll out Macs to some of our end user base. The 4500 employees are spread out world wide with most sites having about sixty to one hundred and twenty people per site. The vast majority of our sites are in Europe but we do have people in the Americas and Asia.

Because of the small size of our offices we don't have a people who are trained in Mac hardware support at most sites (some don't even have full time support). At the moment, our plan for supporting Mac hardware is to keep an extra macbook which is already enrolled, and built, on site. In the case of a hardware emergency we will restore the users documents and get them up and running as quickly as possible. The onsite technician will then take the hardware to an authorized hardware support location and, once the hardware is repaired, swap the laptops back.

I was hoping that someone else out there has either been in this situation or has advice on the best way to handle meeting our end user hardware support needs. Also, does anyone know any companies which handle first level support for both mac and PCs? The company we are currently using only supports PCs and is reticent to deliver any type of mac support. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

[alexjdale]

There is nothing wrong with your plan, we are a large enterprise with about 5,000 Macs and we do pretty much the same thing since we are spread across ~40 sites. In-house repair is not cost-effective for us. Make sure when you take systems to Apple that you do not plan to get that data back, or that the OS will be usable in your environment (wiping the drive is probably a good idea).

A good backup solution like CrashPlan Pro would be very helpful in turning systems around so users can get back to work (they can self-restore). I personally think all end-user systems should be treated as disposable and policies and practices should be built around that.

[gachowski]

I don't know if there is a size limit or if you have to get AppleCare for Enterprise...

"IBM’s Global Technology Services, a worldwide Apple Authorized Service Provider, will provide onsite service within the next business day."

From

http://www.apple.com/support/enterprise/

Worth reaching out to Apple and IBM...

C

[Chris_Hafner]

Yep. Sounds like you've already worked out your Cost/Benefit We are a self service facility but probably wouldn't be at 60 users. 120... maybe. That depends on whatever else needs to be done. Our hardware tech also maintains our printers/copiers/projectors etc so it pays for itself pretty easily for us. If he were just swapping hard drive then no.

[adamcodega]

Plan sounds pretty solid, you could search for any Apple IT consultants around your offices to help with software/hardware issues but I'm not sure if there's one that would be available at all your office locations. You could also cost out overnight shipments to your office and back.

Nothing is perfect but I find in my experience, around 100 people using Airs and Pros, we hand out loaners most commonly due to people forgetting their laptops at home or damaging their own device versus hardware failure.

[Look]

3 year hardware leases.
3 year extended hardware cover from Apple.
If it's broke you give it back to Apple :).

Honestly thats enough gear to talk to Apple or a third party leasing company about, you might find you can have an arrangement where if you need a spare to replace a warranty repair they simply deliver one from their nearest depot or similar.

If your going down a purchased hardware it all gets a bit more complicated and you kind of have to take care of your own spares and repairs.

[wdpickle]

You can also consider swapping out the hard drive to the "loaner" machine while the Mac is at the shop, if they are MacBooks, iMacs not so much.

[Chris_Hafner]

@wdpickle Yea... but things get awful tricky with multiple models of SSD based MacBook(s)(air)(Pro). I really like the code42/JAMF backup and swap method but since we don't have ProE onsite we can't push that data fast enough to use it for loaners. SSD to SSD transfers are SO fast though...