Companies distracted by virtualisation are wasting a fortune on desktop management and there’s massive potential for the channel to streamline these costs, according to a study by analyst IDC.
On average companies spend between €205 and €240 a year to support each PC, the study found. At the top end of profligacy, some high-spending enterprises spend €300 or more per seat, reported senior research analyst Giorgio Nebuloni, at IDC EMEA’s European Enterprise Server Group.
Forget virtualisation we haven’t cracked desktop management yet
“There is considerable scope for reducing operational and management cost in client computing by eliminating and automating repetitive tasks,” he said.
While the need for client virtualisation is increasingly recognized by EMEA organisations, IDC’s Nebuloni argued these are still early days. “Most companies are still at the beginning of the learning curve,” he said, “Drawing distinctions between different technologies will be difficult.”
IDC’s estimates for European spend on desktop management included internal staff expenses (around 50 per cent of total costs), external staff expenses (15–20 per cent) and software licenses (35 per cent of total costs).
RES Software, which sponsored the study, claimed that this is an opportunity for organisations to shift their desktop management strategies and cut costs. Meanwhile, in the quest for greater business agility and flexibility, only 10 per cent were moving over to using tablets in the next three years.
Desktops are not going away, argued Kees van Bekkum, RES Software general manager for EMEA (see pic). “Users want more flexibility but they also want to retain their existing experience,” he said. “As more workers need access to their applications and data from multiple devices and different locations, managing these hybrid environments can be more complex for IT.”
By separating the user settings from the desktop and automating desktop management tasks organisations can address those pain points now, he argued. This would, “cut desktop management costs considerably.”
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