“Auto Warehousing Co. CIO Dale Frantz says his decision to go from a Windows shop to one powered by Apple [Mac] is based on time and labor spent maintaining Windows,” Larry Dignan blogs for ZDNet.
Dignan reports, “I emailed Frantz to get some more color on his decision. Without offering specific return targets he did tie up a the loose ends. Instead of interpreting his remarks and paraphrasing I thought it was best to let him tell it.”
We did a study to analyze the actual cost of “Windows” maintenance and support… When the analysis was complete, the results were unbelievable – simply unbelievable how much time, effort and money we were investing into the care and feeding of Windows on a PC. When you add that internal support cost into the ROI calculation for Macs the results were undeniable.
We found the true cost to support a single PC in the shop environment to greatly outweigh the minimal difference in hardware/software cost between a Mac and PC with Vista. It is our belief that we will achieve a significant savings with this move to Macs on the shop floor, as well as increase system reliability and user satisfaction.
Much more in the full article here.
Yikes! You can’t buy that kind of publicity… wow.
My Zune is magic, and it taught me how to be a better lover.
I think this is what’s called a “no brainer” ???????
Just amazing that people have been ignoring all the TCO studies done in the past.
This from the D.U.H. Institute.
Yeah, Mike. having a “real” business, not one those fruity “creative” shops … like mine ;^)… show some of the real advantages of Mac OS X over Windows in terms a bean counter can love, means a lot.
Finally the “real world” may be starting to get it.
In other news…
MDN’s server needs a faster modem. I’ve got an old 9600 baud modem to sell for a good price!
Call me…
Ouch this one is going to hurt….
Zune Tang
Is that some kind of brown, powdered instant breakfast drink?
Why eat shee-ite when you can drink it.
Tang…now in the new “Zune” flavor.Specially formulated for Windows PC users. Because they know what crap is all about.
Many of the rank and file end users have no problem switching once they get a taste of using the Mac, but top management and the IT guys always come with some reason not to change, why Windows is better and they don’t know anything about the Mac, ect.
Makes me sick.
“As part of my due diligence I have visited 2 companies that have between 10,000 – 20,000 Macs on their network. In both cases the companies have blended networks, supporting both Mac’s and Windows PC’s. In both cases Mac XServes were the controlling architecture. The network management tools and support software that Apple provides allows each of these companies to have fewer than five I/S support personnel. I have more than 5 just to support our fleet of Windows PC’s and related devices.”
Hmmmm. It’s no wonder why PC fanboys are resistant to letting Macs into their Microsoft centric environments. Most of their jobs would be eliminated. Imagine the savings a company can achieve. Many companies have already lost millions in fighting Windows viruses and malware. Tsk Tsk.
Well, I re-read this again, and while my comments were disputed last week by at least two people, I’ll repeat what I said then.
Nowhere does it say this company is switching from Doze to OS X. They are only switching from PC hardware to Apple hardware, NOT moving away from XP, now or as far as I can see, ever.They plainly state thet are staying in the Doze environment. OK, Apple makes great hardware. Next.
I’m connecting from a Mac to a PC via a remote desktop connection and need to print from the windows pc via my Mac. Unfortunately I can’t install any drivers on the remote pc and there is no printer configured on the remote pc. When connecting windows to windows they rely on a thing called tricerat screwdrivers to give access to all the printers on your machine to the remote machine but there is no mac version. If I can solve that then I can go Mac at work but I need to use the software that I connect to via RDC and without printing it’s of no use.
@jay
You missed this in the original story:
The company is taking 12 to 18 months to rewrite AWC’s vehicle inventory processing system to work with the Mac. That’s why they are recoding it in Java.
And running Parallels to make Macs work with some applications.
If they wanted to use a Mac to run Windows and existing Windows applications, they wouldn’t need Parallels. They’d use BootCamp and ignore OS X, but that’s clearly not what they are planning.
Jay
They are in essence sandboxing Windows with Parallels. So It makes no difference that it’s on a Mac. If you could install OS X on a PC it would have the same effect, I would think.
Comment from: jay
“Nowhere does it say this company is switching from Doze to OS X. They are only switching from PC hardware to Apple hardware, NOT moving away from XP, now or as far as I can see, ever.They plainly state thet are staying in the Doze environment. OK, Apple makes great hardware. Next.”
Could you please quote where “They plainly state thet are staying in the Doze environment.” They do say: “…to greatly outweigh the minimal difference in hardware/software cost between a Mac and PC with Vista.” This is an ambiguous statement – does Vista apply to PC’s and Macs? “[They] did a study to analyze the actual cost of “Windows” maintenance and support. Why would they be performing a study of the cost to maintain Windows, find it astronomically high and the switch to different hardware and stay on the same expensive software?
I agree that they do not state specifically that they are switching to OS X, and they may not be, but please do explain what logic they would have to switch hardware and stay on the same expensive software. You make this very clear cut, but they are ambiguous writers.
WOW (it does start now?)…JUST WOW…genuine lucidity in an IT analysis!…it boggles the mind!
“Tipping Point” ~ChrissyOne
@ Zune Tang
If your Zune taught you to be a better lover, your Judy doll must have been under inflated
@ Zune Tang
If your Zune taught you to be a better lover, your Judy doll must have been under inflated
@ Zune Tang
If your Zune taught you to be a better lover, your Judy doll must have been under inflated
@ Zune Tang
If your Zune taught you to be a better lover, your Judy doll must have been under inflated
Jay,
Let me re-dispute your comments again this week.
This week’s article states (much along the lines of the last week’s one) that, while they’re not moving away from Windows just yet, they will be RE-WRITING their front-end application in Java. Once that is done, they’ll shut down Parallels.
It also states that supporting XP inside Parallels is less demanding than supporting XP on non-Apple hardware. What is says is: they’re running Mac OS X on Apple hardware, and for ONE SINGLE application that is custom-built in-house, they’re (temporarily) using Parallels, while the development team is re-writing it and testing Java version of it.
They had two choices: buy new PCs, with Vista (XP won’t be selling beyond end of this year), re-write their apps to work in Vista, and have truckload of issues with the usual Windows/PC support; or, buy Apple hardware with mac OS X, buy Parallels, use existing XP licenses (he checked with MS, they said it was OK) and re-write your app to work with Mac OS X instead. The second option was obviously cheaper.
Apple makes great hardware. It also makes great OS. This guy realised both and is on his way to leveraging both in his business. Next.
@Quevar:
“There are no plans to move away from Microsoft SQL Server, only to rewrite the client app in Java.”
SQL Server only runs on various versions of Doze. The only use of OS X is only to run Parallels in order to run SQL on Apple hardware.
It’s the hardware they want, not OS X. Running parallels on OS X is only the means to an end; which is running M$-compatible software.
Hey, I’m Apple all the way; I’m willing to be shown I’m wrong here, but I just don’t see anything to get excited about, especially since almost all Apple HW is high quality but generic.
digg it: http://digg.com/apple/Switching_from_Windows_to_Mac_The_ROI_case