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Survey says Macs have lower management costs than PCs
9 March, 2010
By Mark Cox |
In response to a survey conducted by the Enterprise Desktop Alliance, 260 IT administrators from large organizations with both Macs and PCs responded that Macs are less expensive than PCs to manage.
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).
The biggest disparity was in the time spent troubleshooting. 65 percent said Macs were cheaper (with 38 percent saying over 20 percent cheaper) while only 16 percent said PCs were cheaper (with 9 percent saying over 20 percent cheaper). 19 percent said they cost the same
Macs were also well ahead in: Help Desk calls, at 54 percent to 16 percent for PCs, with 29 percent saying the same; System Configuration, at 50 percent to 25 percent, with 24 percent saying the same, and User Training, at 48 percent to 16 percent, with 26 percent saying the same.
The numbers were, however, relatively close in a couple categories. For example, on software license fees while 31 percent said Macs were cheaper (with 16 percent saying over 20 percent cheaper), 23 percent said PCs were cheaper (with 12 percent saying over 20 percent cheaper. 47 percent said the same. In supporting infrastructure, 37 percent said Macs were cheaper (19% by over 20 percent) while 25 percent said PCs were cheaper (15 percent by over 2o percent
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.
"Administrators in organizations that have both Mac and PC platforms have the experience to determine 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 results were conducted by an online survey from December 15, 2009 until January 15, 2010, over 520 individuals from around the world responded to the online survey. Excluded from the results were all but the 320 respondents from organizations with both Macs and PCs whose sites had 50 or more servers or over 100 Macs.
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. Member companies include Absolute Software, Centrify, Group Logic, IBM and Web Help Desk.
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