CIO Magazine recently published an article Eight Financial Reasons Why You Should Use Mac OS – CIO.com – Business Technology Leadership. Broadly speaking the article observed two relative benefits over Windows-based machines: increased productivity and lower TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).
Among many other findings, the authors concluded that Mac creative professionals were producing $26,000 more each in annual revenues for their employers than their Windows counterparts …
three-year TCO turned out to be twice as high for Windows than Mac.
The eight reasons cited were:
- Macs bring a better overall value proposition
- Macintosh licensing fees are cheaper
- The Mac desktop spawns fewer calls to the help desk
- Mac is just as cost-effective as Windows to manage and administer
- Add Macs while hanging on to your investments in other OSes
- Mac users are more productive workers
- Macs last longer
- Mac OS is more secure
If such results come through they present a compelling example for companies continually looking for new ways to manage their costs. Yet, getting to the point where one can achieve those alleged savings may be prohibitive. Many of the processes companies execute are tied to the tools they use and those tools are often tied to a specific platform, making it very difficult to move away.
If being able able to move to lower cost platforms is an objective then avoiding this lock-in in the first place needs to be a key principle. But in practice this is difficult to achieve as there is generally a cost associated with realizing the principle with no near-term pay back. Depending on the processes to be replaced, significant risk can be faced, that in some instances raise concerns that seem insurmountable.
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