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Survey of IT Administrators Finds That Macs Have Lower Management Costs than PCs
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In response to an annual survey concluded in January 2010 by the Enterprise Desktop Alliance, 66% of 322 IT administrators from large organizations with both Macs and PCs stated that their organization expects to increase the number of Macs in their sites. The respondents cited "user preference," "[increased] productivity," and "ease of technical support" as leading reasons for choosing Macs.
29% of the respondents cited lower total cost of ownership as one of the key reasons their organization buys Macs. Overall 45% cited lower total cost of ownership, ease of technical support, or both, as a significant factor in their Mac purchases.
The full survey inquired about buying plans, IT management and administration issues, and the cost of managing the systems. Related to the cost of managing Macs, the survey asked the respondents to estimate the relative cost of a number of factors including: software license fees, time troubleshooting, user training, help desk calls, system configuration, and supporting infrastructure (servers, network, and printers).
Administrators in organizations that have both Mac and PC platforms have the experience todetermine whether managing Macs is less expensive, said T. Reid Lewis, CEO of Group Logic, and president of the Enterprise Desktop Alliance. The members of the Enterprise Desktop Alliance provide products and services that make deployment and management of Macs easier to do.
The respondents were given the option to select from a range of cost differences. Not only did the administrators across the board say that Macs were less expensive, in all but one category the majority of administrators who said Macs cost less said they were more than 20% less expensive to manage than PCs. Of those who asserted that PCs cost less, the majority always asserted that PCs were between 0 and 20% less expensive to manage than Macs.
"As a greater percentage of enterprise applications become OS-neutral, the cost to support a more diverse hardware and OS mix will decrease, making Macs a more viable choice for a greater number of users who continue to demand them," according to Michael Silver, vice president and research director at Gartner in the their report, "Gartner Predicts 2010: PC End-User Issues." "Providers that sell enterprise-class Mac solutions and Mac services may see an increase in demand."
Issues that matter to Administrators:
The survey also explored the major issues for IT administrators in sites that had Macs. 81% said that parity in integration and management between Macs and PCs is important to their organization. In looking more closely at the issues of importance to the organizations, security and file sharing among systems emerged as the leading concerns.
Among the issues that ranked as "very" or "extremely" important to the 322 respondents were:
• File Sharing between Operating Systems
79%
• Security
79%
• Client management (inventory, patches, compliance)
72%
• Active Directory integration
66%
• Cross-platform help desk and knowledge base support
60%
"Despite the uncertain economic conditions, Apple can expect the Mac to continue to find acceptance in large organizations," said T. Reid Lewis, president of the Enterprise Desktop Alliance, and CEO of Group Logic. "More and more solutions are available to help these enterprises address their integration and management issues."
Who supports the Mac
According to the respondents, 60% of the organizations have a unified support organization whose members support both Macs and PCs. About 14% of the organizations provide official support only for the PCs while the Macs are self-managed.
Conducted from December 15, 2009, until January 15, 2010, the survey had four objectives: to measure plans regarding Mac purchases in large organizations, to assess the importance of Windows-Mac integration, to identify key IT management and administrative priorities related to the integration of the Mac, and to begin to assess relative cost of management for Macs and PCs. Over 500 individuals responded to the survey. Because of our emphasis on enterprise and large-scale installations such as universities and government agencies, we included the 322 respondents whose sites had 50 or more servers or over 100 Macs. Details regarding the survey questions and responses can be found in a survey report published at the Enterprise Desktop Alliance website:
http://www.enterprisedesktopalliance.com/resource_center.html
The Enterprise Desktop Alliance (EDA) is a collaboration among enterprise class software companies to deliver solutions that streamline the deployment, integration and management of the Mac in sophisticated Windows-centric IT environments. By leveraging the suite of capabilities that EDA solutions offer, an enterprise can use the same hardware and software infrastructures to easily integrate Macs and achieve the same level of control, security, policy compliance, and services that they currently have with their Windows platforms.
For more information, visit:
http://www.enterprisedesktopalliance.com
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