Survey of IT Administrators Finds That Macs Have Lower Management Costs Than PCs

SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 9 /PRNewswire/ -- 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.  In some categories such as troubleshooting, user training and help desk calls, three times as many administrators said that Macs cost less to manage.  

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 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 respondents were given the option to select from a range of cost differences.  Not only did the administrators predominantly say that Macs were less expensive, in all but one category the majority of administrators who think Macs cost less asserted that they were more than 20% less expensive to manage than PCs.  Of those who believe that PCs cost less, the majority always asserted that PCs were between 0 and 20% less expensive to manage than Macs.

    
    
                         PCs are cheaper   Cost the     Macs are Cheaper
                       >20%   0-20%   Total   Same      0-20%  >20%   Total
                      ----    -----   -----   ----      -----  ----   -----
     Software
     license
     fees              10%     12%     23%     47%      15%    16%     31%
    Time
     troubleshooting    7%      9%     16%     19%      27%    38%     65%
    User
     training           6%     10%     16%     36%      25%    23%     48%
    Help
     desk
     calls              8%      8%     16%     29%      22%    32%     54%
    System
     configuration     11%     15%     25%     24%      23%    27%     50%
    Supporting
     infrastructure    10%     15%     25%     38%      18%    19%     37%
     (servers,
     network,
     printers)

About the Survey

Conducted from December 15, 2009 until January 15, 2010, over 520 individuals from around the world responded to the online survey. A detailed summary of the survey is available at EDA survey. This survey sought the perspective of enterprises and large-scale installations such as universities and government agencies. We excluded from the results all but the 320 respondents from organizations with both Macs and PCs whose sites had 50 or more servers or over 100 Macs. Relative to management cost questions, in our analysis we excluded the responses of those who selected "Don't know" or "Not involved in cost calculations," which resulted in 260 respondents for this section of the survey. See press release: "Enterprise Desktop Alliance Survey Reveals 66% of Enterprises Expect to Increase Mac Systems"

About the Enterprise Desktop Alliance

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.

For more information, visit www.enterprisedesktopalliance.com.

SOURCE Enterprise Desktop Alliance