° 74 percent expect to increase the number of Macs within their organization. (Fewer than two percent said they expected to reduce the number of Macs.)
° 91 percent of the IT administrators indicated that integration and management parity between Macs and PCs were major issues of importance to their organization. It is clear that organizations want to be able to manage all systems and platforms in one consistent manner.
Peter Frankl of LANrev, one of the founding EDA companies, attributes more Macs coming to the enterprise and business world to several factors: the Mac's switch to the Intel platform, the advent of virtualization, lack of adoption of Windows Vista and an increasing use of Apple products by both executives and the general populace of companies.
"Lots of people bought iPhones, had a good experience and moved on to the Macs at home," he adds. "Then they wanted the Mac experience at work."
He also says that EDA studies show that, while the initial cost of buying a Mac may be more than Windows systems, the long-term cost of ownership is less. In fact, Frankl says some companies that once had both Windows and Mac computers on employees' desks are now replacing two computers with one Mac and virtualization technology such as Parallels.
The survey also shows that productivity gains and employee preference are the primary drivers of enterprises adopting Macs, with lower cost of ownership also playing an important role. The respondents were IT administrators, nearly 60 percent of whom manage 100 or more Macs within a wide range of enterprise class organizations.
“The importance of integration and management parity with PCs is an indication that the Mac users realize that getting Macs is easier to do if they can be managed,†says Laura DiDio, principal analyst at Information Technology Intelligence Corp. “The broad trends of Macs continuing their penetration are reinforced by the results of this survey.â€
When queried more deeply about issues related to managing Macs, the IT administrators identified the following as major issues/concerns. The percentages reflect the number of respondents who selected an item. Most identified more than one issue:
° Integration with Active Directory, 58 percent;
° Client management (inventory, patches, compliance), 53 percent;
° File sharing, 42 percent;
° Configuration consistency, 38 percent;
° Application compatibility, 27 percent;
° Non-standard management utilities, 26 percent;
° Security, 19 percent;
° Data recovery, 12 percent.
“The survey corroborates our finding that organizations are integrating the Mac and are seeking those solutions that allow the Mac to be managed the way PCs are managed,†says Jim Chappell, vice president of business development for Centrify. “Each of the Enterprise Desktop Alliance solutions help companies increase IT acceptance of Macs in the enterprise by integrating Macs into their Windows managed environment and reducing the total cost of ownership.â€
Conducted during November and December of 2008, the survey had three primary objectives: to measure organizational commitment to the Mac within large organizations, to assess the importance of Windows-Mac integration, and to identify key IT management and administrative priorities related to the integration of the Mac. Details regarding the survey questions and responses can be found in a survey report published at the EDA web site.
In addition to LANrev, founding members of the EDA are Centrify, Atempo, GroupLogic and Parallels.
