So I like to think of the harem that is my pool of Apple devices. Seems I am somewhat justified in this belief due to a survey of 260 IT Administrators. In a recent PRNewswire article, the Enterprise Desktop Alliance conducted a survey of environments that maintained both Macs and PCs and found that the majority of respondents felt that Macs were cheaper to manage than PCs. The survey solicited results from 520 individuals world-wide with in organizations that either had 50 or more servers or over 100 Macs.

So what exactly is involved in the costs associated with the management of technology in an organization? It is all about Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). The TCO takes into account the direct and indirect cost of owning a device. This goes beyond the physical hardware purchase, but attempts to also take into account the amount of costs associated with actually maintaining these devices over time. If it is a "high-touch" environment meaning events like manual security patch installations, upgrades etc., then the dollar amount for the personnel performing the activities are taken into account. If devices break and have to be fixed or replaced, then there is a human cost associated with that work as well. Other types of costs are also factored in revolving around areas like training, user calls to the help desk for software issues, each and every event or issue translates to a cost.

Finally there is the life of the device. In most high transaction environments the refresh-cycle on hardware is roughly 24 months. This two year cycle is vital in effectively determining the calculation for TCO. The basic math is relatively simple; How much did you pay for the device, how much money was spent on support personnel interacting with that device over the lifecycle of the device. In short, how much did it cost me to own that piece of hardware... really.

The survey covered areas including Software Licensing, Troubleshooting, Training, Service Desk (Help Desk) calls, Configuration and Infrastructure. Across the board, the survey found that PCs resulted in a higher expenditure for the business. The lower the "hands on" factor, the lower the Total Cost of Ownership and that is what you want to get to. In the world of Technology financial you could theoretically go much deeper into analyzing productivity which could then be attributed to results or revenue, but that is another story all together. As to why the belief is that Macs are cheaper to own, 29% believed a lower TCO for the Mac Platform over PCs while 45% added ease of technical support to the TCO.

To be honest, I am a firm believer that this also translates into the consumer market. For example, in our home, we have an Apple G5 computer which I purchased in January of 2004. We also have an PC Desktop which was purchased in 2007. Both have had to have their Power Units replaced, and with the frequency of ensuring the latest patches are up to date on both platforms, I find myself spending far less time working on the G5 than I do any of the Macs in the house. The differentiating factor for this scenario is the 6 years I have owned the G5 vs the 3 years I have owned the PC. The Mac is my lower TCO. The same could have been said for the Apple PowerBook I owned for 5 years before being able to justify upgrading to the MacBook Pro (now on its 4th year).

I have always argued the cost point of Apple products against my PC counterparts. As with any product purchased, it has to go beyond the upfront expenditure of and deeper into the TCO analysis to make a valid argument. I am just surprised that there are not more organizations moving to a mixed platform environment where potential operating costs can be realized. I still believe it will happen, but it is a slow moving cultural shift that may take a few more years.