Mixed Device Environments Create Complexity and Risk
In today’s hybrid workplace, IT is under increasing pressure to improve employees' digital work experience, drive more IT efficiency, and increase user productivity. According to a recent survey conducted by TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group, 9 out of 10 IT professionals consider digital work experience optimization one of their top technology priorities for the next 12 months. In their effort to optimize the digital experience, many organizations have ended up with mixed device environments where employees use, and IT must support, a mix of Windows PCs and Mac devices. Supporting such a mixed device environment comes with challenges. Of the challenges cited by the respondents, higher internal support, licensing, device and peripheral costs, increased complexity, and collaboration and security issues were mentioned the most.
Download this ebook for peer-based insights about how to manage mixed device environments and enhance digital work experiences.
The Pros and Cons of Supporting Both PCs and Macs in Your Knowledge Worker Environments
Download this ebook to explore the benefits and challenges associated with supporting a mixed-device environment and assess how organizations plan to evolve their approaches over time:
• Gain insight into how organizations today view the importance of digital work experience optimization.
• See how IT decision-makers view the differences between PCs and Macs in areas like
manageability and end-user experience (EUX).
• Better understand how EUX differs between PC and Mac devices
Supporting a mix of device platforms (PCs and Macs) frequently drives up costs and complexity:
Many respondents said support costs (41%), licensing costs (40%), and complexity tied to the additional management tools required to support the environment (39%) are all driven up by the need to support a mixed device environment.
85% of respondents reported the challenges associated with reaching the same level of security across PCs and Macs as very or moderately acute.
91% reported that adopting modern management with platforms like Microsoft Intune, VMware Workspace ONE, Intel vPro®, and others had a significant or moderately positive impact on their ability to support and manage their mixed device environment.
Respondents were 3X as likely to say PCs have the advantage in terms of the third-party security, management, and monitoring software available for the platform. They were also 3X as likely to say PCs have the advantage in terms of remote management capabilities.
4 Key Takeaways
Each organization should decide what is right for their user base. There is no one right answer for how many and which workers within an organization should use a Mac versus a PC. However, it’s important to consider the value of applying modern management practices to cut costs, improve EUX, and minimize overhead, among many other benefits.
Leverage a quantified digital experience score to make decisions regarding your devices. Organizations looking to refine their device policies to increase productivity, reduce costs, optimize employee engagement, and accelerate time to market should leverage both user sentiment and hard data retrieved from the endpoints to guide their decisions.
Mac users are introducing more enterprise risk than their PC-using peers. Organizations with the most Macs are more than twice as likely to say Mac ticket volumes are outsized. Organizations with the most Macs are 2.7X as likely to say reinstalls are needed more than expected. Organizations with the most Macs are 2.6X as likely to say instances of data loss caused by Macs are more frequent than they should be.
PCs built on Intel vPro are designed for today's and tomorrow's IT professionals. They offer forward-looking features designed to enhance user productivity, secure business data, manage critical devices remotely, and scale your fleet with confidence.
“Ultimately, an improved digital work experience creates a symbiotic relationship where both the IT organization and end users thrive and are satisfied. In fact, 54% of respondents reported that improved employee satisfaction is an outcome targeted by enhancing digital work experiences. At the end of the day, accomplishing this goal should result in a more agile, productive, and innovative workplace.”
Mixed Device Environments Create Complexity and Risk, an Enterprise Strategy Group eBook, TechTarget, March 2024
“The implication is that most organizations supporting a mix of devices today have reached a point of diminishing returns, where the challenges introduced by further leveraging Macs might outweigh the benefits. On the other hand, organizations do not expect the use of Macs to go away but rather remain largely flat over a three-year time horizon. That said, if organizations did make the decision to unify their device approach, they would overwhelmingly select PCs by more than a 4:1 margin (82% vs. 18%).”
Mixed Device Environments Create Complexity and Risk, an Enterprise Strategy Group eBook, TechTarget, March 2024