“We’ve been investigating the ROI from Macs versus PCs in the business environment. I was reviewing the data from a case study one of our analysts is completing and the results are interesting,” Ian Campbell, Nucleus Research’s President and CEO, blogs.
“We’ll publish the case study soon (get on our newsletter to be notified of the latest from our analyst team) so you can get a full look at the actual situation but here are two interesting data points concerning support,” Campbell reports. “This particular company has approximately 1700 employees with a mixed environment of PC users and Mac users. Here’s the interesting data point: On a per user basis, for every 3 trouble tickets the help desk opens for PC users they only open 2 for Mac users. In addition, the Mac trouble tickets are closed 30% quicker”
Campbell reports, “To net it out, in this company the Macs have 1/3 fewer problems and the problems are solved a lot quicker.”
“Sure this is data from only one company but it’s a fair comparison of sophisticated users in a roughly balanced Mac versus PC environment,” Campbell explains. “We’re investigating a number of deployments and look for a lot more from Nucleus Research on Macs versus PCs in the near future.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If anything, further investigation will reveal to them that Macs will require even less support than they found in their initial case study.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Kenneth” for the heads up.]
Paging Jonathan Blum. Paging Jonathan Blum.
Jonathan has stepped out. Can I take a message ?
I bet most of the tickets were from new Mac users looking for the Start button to shut down their Mac for the night.
A jon & a bum in one name?
No wonder IT guys are hesitant to move to Macs. Windows machines guarantee continued employment.
I have said this for years and years – furthermore, a huge number of Windows problems exist for all users regardless of their abilities (due to the vast complexity of motherboards, incompatibilities, I/O issues, viruses, etc.) whereas most problems for Mac users cease to exist as their experience increases…
Complexity is the problem. Windows creates more, not less, complexity with each new version. Good luck with that!
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don’t forget that macs usually resell for a higher percentage of their original cost.
So you DO get more with Windows! Take that you MAC guys… oh, wait…
FUZZY MATH!
Ok… so there are 1700 users.. w/o knowing what the percentage of Mac’s vs PC’s are, the numbers are meaningless.
If there are 1600 PC users and 1000 Mac users,this looks bad.
A large company has 100 people in IT. The company switches to Macs. 1/3 less trouble calls means they only need 67 people, and on top of that, the troubles are fixed in 1/3 less time, so they only need 1/3 of those 67 people, or 45 people. You think IT managers in PC shops aren’t scared sh*itless over those numbers?
Wish I could edit a post. Do you see my typos?
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@The Rude Bellman,
Uh, reality check. When you’ve got more than two or three Macs, like maybe twenty or thirty or more, and you’re using Apple XSan (or any SAN), You’re absolutely going to need full-time IT pros in your company, make no mistake about that.
Our company grew from one Mac about eight years ago to 18, including laptops, and our IT department will have nothing to do with them, and so the two of us that instigated the move to Mac are stuck with what we’re actually getting paid to do [not IT work], PLUS we do ALL of the network and desktop support for all of the Macs. When you’ve got lot’s of any kind of machine you’re going to need dedicated human support for that platform. 1/3 few problems that are solved 30% faster is not zero – in fact it’s far from it. So if you’re thinking of moving to Mac in your organization, and you’re go to have more than four or five of them, get some kind of contract or full-time in-house IT support or you’re going to be sorry.
I will never ever voluntarily use Windows, and Windows costs a whole helluva lot of money to operate compared to and maintain – period, but a workflow that is based on a significant number of Macs is going to need real professional support. So don’t send the IT folks away, unless they’re the sticks-the-mud that our IT people are, in which case you hopefully have the authority to summarily fire them.
I don’t trust their figures. We have a much smaller office (10 people) and we switched everyone over to Mac last year and we don’t have a tenth of the issues we were having before hand.
… compared to OS X…
Only 1/3 less. They must have a lot of new Mac users asking basic questions. That explains why Mac problems are resolved faster, on average.
@ jitnol:
1600 PC users plus 1000 Mac users = 2,700 users. FUZZY MATH!
The article stated that the Mac and PC users were “in a roughly balanced Mac versus PC environment.” So the numbers are comparable.
What would be more revealing is what were the types of problems occurred. If PCs tickets were for freezing/crashing issues, data loss, etc., and Mac tickets were for users who couldn’t find a preference setting, then the ROI has to be skewed even more toward the Mac.
@ Mr. Peabody:
Why will your IT Department not support your Macs?
If everyone agreed that you could bring them on board when you and your counterpart did, then were they not also agreeing to learn about the platform and support you? And were there not dedicated funds to do just that? Or is it just ignorance and they’re afraid to support them?
Somebody at your company should tell them they have to support everyone, you guys as well.
This is a nice study, however, there are few confounding factors that are very hard to filter out, some of them are:
1) The Mac users are smarter, thus solve their own problems
2) The Mac support guys are smarter, thus solve the reported problems faster
3) Different applications are installed on the PCs and Macs
In any event, I am not at all disputing the results, just suggesting that, on statistical grounds, there are lots of confounding factors that are not mentioned in the short summary of the results.
However, if they have assigned computer assignment was randoms for both the users and the support guys, the uncertainity would be much more minimal.
In any event, as long as Mac deployement cuts costs by any method, it is always a good reason to stop using PCs.
1/3????? Try 99% less. I know for a fact in my business.
@ Ampar
Hahahaha… yeah he qualifies as one of the top 5 idiots list. We know who the others are. Actually we need to do a vote for the top 5.
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@ jltnol
You are either new to the Mac or don’t have any experience with them. These figures are not the least surprising to experienced Mac users (ie. people who have experienced a Mac environment for any reasonable time).
“FUZZY MATH” – sounds like a clueless Windows-user comment.
Ok, here is my small perspective. Myself and mybusiness partner have a very small business that is in startup mode. It is basically me and him with a few others that we occasionally use. He is a longtime Widows user and I am a mac user.
Since the inception of the company, his Dell laptop has stopped working, and recently has gotten some sort of virus that has made it useless (and is currently “in the shop”). His HP desktop has had to be…..refreshed, that is defragged, new virus software, re-installs, etc. He currently runs an antivirus program, and an adware program all the time, sucking away cycles and costing money to purchase.
I have 2 desktop Macs (one is an old G4) and one MBP. I have spent $0.00 on antivirus software, $0.00 on anti-adware software, and $0.00 on repairs. I do not have to run extra software to protect me, and I have been virus free for years, even with the two desktops running 24 hours a day. None of my machines have ever gone down.
But at least his Dell laptop was “cheaper:
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Despite the well-documented fact that Macs are less costly to support, IT managers around the globe are still justifying their reluctance to support Macs repeating the lame excuse that their companies can’t afford “the additional cost of supporting Macs”–as though these hypothetical Macs would surely cost more to support than the Windoze computers they would replace.
Needless to say, one can’t help suspect that the attutides of many of these IT types are motivated by their desire to protect their turf without having to learn anything new. Gotta be careful how you ration those brain cells!
@ Mr. Peabody
I have to disagree. With around 40 Macs, we have no IT department. A couple of us handle the few tech support requests. If your people are using stable software, and they are reasonably competent, there just aren’t that many problems. We did have one windoze machine that was required to run Alchemy archiving software. That one machine took about as much support time as all the Macs. In fact, when the disk filled up, a contract company spent six or eight hours trying to add a disk. Made me crazy. We finally got it to save to our XServe, and that sufficed until we could get rid of the whole mess.
Many years ago, I worked alongside the second-line support at BP’s corporate head office in the City of London.
The entire Macintosh estate of around 1200 users at Moorgate was supported – if memory serves – by THREE guys; actually, it was even better than that because one of the guys was a workshy fop and the team leader had his head up his ass. So, in reality, they were probably being supported by around 1.75 people.
And yet – because of the strange way in which politics work in an oil company (oil price=high means exploration is more important, price=low means refining and retail is more important) – BP moved comprehensively away from the Mac in the 1996/7 period when oil was around $13/barrel and the oil guys had control of the wheel.
Admittedly, Apple didn’t help themselves even then: no matter how many alarm bells were being rung at Apple’s UK headquarters (and trust me, we were ringing them), we got no concessions or even any clarity regarding roadmaps or similar.
In any case, there isn’t a single office of what used to be BP Exploration that hasn’t increased it’s second-line IT support staff by 10:1 when compared to a like-for-like user base.