Offering regional and national programs, CIO (and CSO) events bring together some of the most respected names and thought leaders in information technology and security. Presented by CIOs and other senior level executives, these invitation-only programs offer timely topics and strong networking. Learn More »
Public Council Teleconference: Application Rationalization — Hidden Costs and Smart Decisions
November 17 at 11:00 am US/Eastern (GMT-5)
Join Honorio Padrón, of The Hackett Group, who will share the drivers for companies to tackle application rationalization and the results of research that define the hidden cost of complexity. Additionally, we will discuss key decision milestones—to start or not, holding the course steady and fulfilling expectations.
Virtual Desktop Cost-Benefit Analysis — Michael Jacobs, Catlin Group
The analysis contained in this presentation measures the cost of everything from the machines and licenses to the infrastructure for virtual vs. traditional desktop environments.
Honor your best senior team members - Apply for the CIO Ones to Watch Award
Get well-earned public recognition for your top up-and-coming team members, your IT organization and your enterprise. Award winners will be announced, publicized and feted in May 2010, great timing to help attract new IT recruits to your company.
Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »April 26, 2007 — CIO —
The reasons for companies to switch from Windows to Mac OS X are as personal, or unique, as is any shift in religion. For some companies, the motivation is to move away from Windows. Others are influenced by their end users' desire for the style and functionality of the Macintosh environment. But whatever the reason for the migration, the attraction must be backed by serious number-crunching and by common sense.
This isn't an article about the reasons to adopt Macintoshes in an enterprise setting. We assume that you've already decided to do so, whether because of company IT policy or user pressure. The issue, instead, is to make the transition as seamless as possible: to bring the new systems into sync with your existing IT infrastructure, to choose appropriate applications and to cope with always-finite budgets. If you are about to make a jump to Mac OS X, either partially or in toto, people who have been there have some advice.
Planning the Move, or How I Made Friends with Those Darn "Creatives"
If you are the fourth-largest advertising company in the world, your products are terabytes of content produced by graphic artists, film makers and copywriters. Their success is yours, keeping them happy is paramount, and that means giving those users Macintoshes.
"The Mac itself, the nature of the Mac, how it works and how it looks, is actually more conducive to the creative mindset. But those same things have also created a religious factor where the typical 'creative'they can't even touch a PC keyboard. I'm being actually serious," says Christian Anschuetz, executive vice president and CIO of Publicis Groupe, which is based in Paris.
In the United States, Publicis Groupe has 19,000 users, and about 25 percent to 30 percent use Macs. According to Anschuetz, managing those Macs and their software is made much easier with some advanced planning, whether you are expanding the number of Macs in your enterprise or switching completely. While this initially seems like common sense, there actually are a number of factors to consider that are not readily apparent. As always, the extent of these factors depends on your particular business case.
For Publicis Group, the Macs have higher total cost of ownership. This is because of the particular hardware configurations and the company's corporate culture, which calls for more intense support on the Mac side.
"The Macs require a greater density of field associates. Where we have 1-to-150 PC techs to users, we're somewhere down to 1-to-100 for Macs. I think that's due partly to the technology and partly due to the users. The creatives are more demanding and you have to be more responding, because those are the people that clearly create our revenue," says Anschuetz.