IBM Is Making a Massive Change Thanks to Apple

Instead of viewing Apple as a bitter rival as it had for years, Big Blue is adopting the company as a vital partner.

IBM is on track to become one of the world’s largest corporate users of Apple’s MacBooks after first offering the hardware in May, the Wall Street Journal reports. And now, IBM is launching a new service that will help other corporations make the same leap from Windows.

The new service takes the lessons IBM just gleaned from implementing more than 110,000 Apple devices, including iPads, MacBooks and iPhones, across its own company, helping corporate clients make the same kind of wide-reaching tech turnover.

IBM’s new knowledge wasn’t just guess-and-check implementation. It learned directly from the source, sending one of its vice presidents for a weeklong immersion into Apple’s methods of distributing its tech internally.

“We each have our strengths,” Fletcher Previn, IBM’s vice president of Workplace as a Service, told the Journal. “Apple is great at the experience and making some of the best devices in the world but we know what a lot of large enterprises need.”