[Fed-Talk] Re: Cost of Ownership Data
[Fed-Talk] Re: Cost of Ownership Data
- Subject: [Fed-Talk] Re: Cost of Ownership Data
- From: Sean Lemson <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 09:55:22 -0700
Three comments:
1) What Apple needs to understand is that management (especially in
Government) speaks charts and graphs and statistics - not touchy
feely ads on TV or even (dare I say) common sense sometimes. I agree
that Apple needs to step up to the plate here and load our guns with
ammo. Right now, we have gut feelings and a 10 year old Gartner
report. Apple told me that they don't want to do this because it
would look like the report was stacked if the group doing the study
was hired by Apple. I disagree. Apple can pay the bill for a
reputable, objective study of some of their larger customers without
tainting the results. Besides, I'd rather fight the smaller battle
of whether the data is stacked than fight the entire platform battle
without any data at all.
There is a strong belief here in upper management that says that Macs
cost more to maintain than PC's. The logically fallacious argument
goes something like: "Businesses are all about profit. If Macs were
cheaper to operate, businesses would be using Macs." I can counter
this argument only with facts, not my gut.
2) The conversion to Windows is being driven by the custom
application space but we get too focused on which OS the user is
using. I'm big on car analogies: If a majority of cars ran on
unleaded gas (Windows) and a large number ran on diesel (Macs). We
can camp out at car dealerships all day and try to convince new car
buyers to buy diesel cars but if gas stations stop selling diesel,
there's no point. People need to get from point A to point B and
that takes gas (software). We need to work with software developers
to either develop W3C compliant web applications or work with them to
see that a Mac version of their app is worth their time (and is
probably easier to develop than they think) - especially since the
Intel shift.
3) A world-class IT organization should be able to support *any*
platform without issue, not just some cookie-cutter system that
impedes the productivity of the users. I don't necessarily advocate
switching people to Mac if they're more comfortable in Windows, but I
expect the same in return from the Windows camp - which isn't the
case. As long as this double standard is in play, coupled with 1 and
2 above, we will lose market share in government and business.
Thanks for all your comments. Keep them coming. I'm learning a bunch.
Sean Lemson
LLNL
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