A new survey from the Enterprise Desktop Alliance (EDA) has revealed that the majority of organisations already using Macs want to increase adoption of the devices.
Of the 314 respondents, 235 (74%) said that they had plans to increase the number of Macs at the company, with just 2% claiming they were planning a reduction in Mac numbers.
The majority of respondents (27%) said that the decision to purchase more Apple computers was driven by user demand, just ahead of the potential increase in productivity, especially in specific application areas such as creative services (24%), the survey said. A lower total cost of ownership (TCO) was identified by 14% as a significant reason behind their decision.
The survey revealed that one of the key issues for IT administrators was integration and management parity between Macs and PCs, suggesting they want to have the ability to manage all systems and platforms in one consistent manner, the report said.
Jim Chappell, vice president of business development for Centrify, one of the bodies that make up the EDA, said: “The survey corroborates our finding that organisations are integrating the Mac and are seeking those solutions that allow the Mac to be managed the way PCs are managed.”
Other issues surrounding the management of Macs in the enterprise identified by the survey include integration with Active Directory, client management, file sharing, configuration consistency, application compatibility, non-standard management utilities, security and data recovery.
Laura DiDio, principal analyst at Information Technology Intelligence Corp, said: “The importance of integration and management parity with PCs is an indication that the Mac users realise that getting Macs is easier to do if they can be managed.”
