The Challenge
Sean Davies, Group Infrastructure & Project Services Manager, and Honey Jadia, Infrastructure Analyst at Hanes Australasia were faced with a two pronged dilemma. Hanes had an ageing fleet of Apple Macs that was “generating lots of requests from the business to upgrade them. But a total refresh was a CapEx impossibility. It was important to be able to offer a new computer to every staff member with a preference for Macs. We had to solve this both from a financial perspective and as a valued employer.”
The organisation is primarily a Windows environment with only 150 Mac users from a total of 2500 in Hanes’ five sites – three in NSW, two in Victoria, plus three users in Queensland and one in Western Australia who report in to the organisation’s Kew, Victoria headquarters. Only 20 of the Macs were newer than three years old, with many approaching seven.
The Apple devices at Hanes are genuine workhorses and critical to its enterprise environment. Hanes’ design and marketing teams, in particular, have software needs or personal likings for Macs. “But, from an IT point of view, the management of this relatively small number was distracting while the combined asset value of the high end machines was considerable,” Sean says.
“To reduce complexity, we also needed to update our Standard Operating Environment, across all levels, every 12 months. This was always done as a separate project but we thought this could also be included in the management solution,” Honey says.
Hanes already had a trusted supplier relationship and highly successful Apple device MSA in place with CompNow. Sean approached their dedicated CompNow account manager with: “We have this problem…”