Macs are gaining favor among IT admins.

This week’s collection of articles is all about love, blooming and fizzling. One piece reports on how IBM and Assurant are using fancy algorithms to route help desk callers to a tech who can best solve their issue, a la eHarmony; while others announce the demise of IT’s love affair with XP and its new-found fondness for Macs. Welcome spring!

IBM + Assurant = Help Desk Harmony?

In a March 18 post on ITWorld.com, writer Chris Kanaracus reports on the recent partnership between IBM and the insurance provider Assurant Solutions to pair help desk callers with the most appropriate tech consultant using eHarmony-style analytics.

The program, dubbed the Real-Time Analytics Matching Program (RAMP), uses an analytics engine that considers factors such as a caller’s average wait time, payment history or spending patterns, according to Kanaracus. The system uses that information to find the right tech, based on their past performance and skill set.

IBM and Assurant say the result is happy, high-performing workers, and even happier customers.

Read the full article here.

The Mac Daddy

If you had the choice between a partner who was temperamental, making a fuss at every turn and always creating time-sapping, emotionally draining drama, and an efficient, stylish, even-headed one, which would you choose?

I suspect you’d choose the latter, and so would many IT administrators across the country. According to a recent survey of IT managers who work with both PCs and Macs, Macs are easier on the bottom line, and require less user training and assistance. The research was reported in a March 17 ZDNet blog post.

In the survey, respondents were asked to consider multiple factors when estimating the relative cost of managing Macs, including: software license fees, time spent troubleshooting, user training, help desk calls, system configuration and supporting infrastructure (servers, network, and printers).

Read the full blog post here.

It Was Great While it Lasted, XP

It seems the once-beloved XP is quickly losing its luster. In a recent piece on Computerworld.com, writer Gregg Keizer reports on a study which found that the number of IT professionals who are concerned with keeping XP is declining.

Says Keizer: “One out of every six IT professionals who last year would have taken XP over Windows 7 was won over by the new operating system in the intervening nine months.”

Quite impressive.

Keizer adds a colorful quote from Diane Hagglund, a senior analyst at Dimensional Research and the poll’s author: “Part of what’s happening with XP, I think, is like when you’re very wedded to the spouse you have because there’s no other choice. But now, there’s this other one out there.”

Read Keizer’s full piece here.

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Jenny Sweeney Mac, What We're Reading