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5 Reasons to Say Yes to Macs, When Your Company Says No

Sometimes, IT leaders are told that the company runs Windows, period. But that doesn't stop them from wishing for the forbidden fruit: One CIO explains why he'd like to bring Apple to his enterprise.

By Robert Lemos

April 03, 2008 — CIO — Will Weider has used Macs since he paid $3,000 for a Mac Plus in 1986 and shelled out another $600 for 512kb of extra memory.

Although he took a break from Apple's computers during much of the 90's, Weider likens Macs to luxury cars in a PC world of Chevy Impalas.

Yet, it's the world of the Impalas where he has to work daily.

As the CIO of Ministry Health Careand Affinity Health System, Weider is well-entrenched in world of Windows, with little hope of introducing Macs. Of the 400 applications necessary for those two businesses to operate, Weider estimates that only about 20 would have a version that runs natively on Mac OS X. He also serves more than 16,000 users with systems less than four years old. Moving that many people over to Mac hardware would cost at least 20 percent more, he estimates, making it unlikely that the healthcare companies will be switching from Windows anytime soon.

"Even for me to suggest (switching) to management would be career suicide," Weider says. "And we are really heavy into standardization, so I wouldn't even consider a mixed-mode environment."

Weider sees possible opportunity in the future, however. As applications increasingly move onto intranets and the Web, Macs could cost-effectively be adopted by smaller clinics and health facilities, he says.

"You are certainly looking at a greater opportunity," he says. "But right now, all of the planets in the solar system would have to line up right to make that [moving to Macs] make sense."

So for now, Weider only dreams of moving his users over to the Mac OS X. He shared the top five reasons he would like to bring Macs into his workplace.

1. Vendor Negotiation Power

Weider likes choice, and he believes there is far too little of it in the PC world. The high cost of Microsoft Vista, and the hardware needed to run the operating system efficiently,has convinced many CIOs to refuse to upgrade. According to a recent Forrester Research report, the use of Windows XP remains virtually unchanged—at about 89 percent— among corporate users.

Weider has not adopted Vista in his enterprise and has no plans to do so in the near future, he says. "There are probably fewer barriers than moving to Macs, but some of the big ones are the same:application incompatibility and cost," Weider says.

When Weider's healthcare clients do need to upgrade, the 45-year-old CIO would like to be able to bargain among multiple vendors. Instead, he has little negotiating power to bring to the table, he says.

 

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