IDC
Introduction
Today, every office worker and traveling employee expects to have a PC as well as network access to e-mail and mission critical business applications. At the same time, corporate executives expect investments in IT equipment and services to improve the bottom line and reduce overall expenses.
The biggest challenge for today's IS executive is to develop a strategy for success in both of these worlds. Give business people the tools to beat the competition and increase sales without consuming all the profits in exploding staff requirements and reduced end user productivity.
Most IS executives would say that the "high cost of ownership" for PC desktop and server hardware and software is the greatest barrier to developing such a strategy. IDC believes that this widely held view of PCs and servers as "unmanageable" systems is inaccurate. We contend products available, today, demonstrate that:
* PC-based systems can be effectively managed, individually or centrally;
* Dedication of staff resources to set-up and maintain large numbers of dispersed desktops and servers does not have to be excessively costly; and
* Modifications and upgrades do not have to lead to disproportionately negative impact on overall application availability.
This paper reports the results of a study designed to identify specific manageability features, administration software tools and general practices that reduce the cost of using PCs and servers.
