Why CIOs are saying no to Macs

Apple's desktop market share has been inching up for some time and, if analyst stats are right, now hovers around the eight per cent mark.

But the business world remains immune to the pull of Apple's hardware, with few - if any - workers in most companies using anything other than the classic Wintel combination, in spite of demand for alternative desktop options from staff.

It's a situation that looks unlikely to change, despite the launch of a new Mac OS: a recent poll of the silicon.com CIO Jury found none of the IT chiefs surveyed said the release of Snow Leopard will prompt their business to adopt Apple desktops.

For many members of the CIO Jury, it's not a judgment on the performance of the OS itself but rather a recognition of the prohibitive costs involved in such a change.

A screenshot from Snow Leopard
(photo credit: Jason Parker/CNET)

Ibukun Adebayo, IT director of social care organisation Turning Point, told silicon.com that the upfront costs, as well as the productivity hit a move would entail, serve as a deterrent to adopting Macs.

Adebayo said: "Before recommending such a radical change for close to 2,000 in-house IT customers, I'd need to consider not only the costs of the software, hardware, and training; but also the intangible costs of inevitable downtime, stakeholder disgruntlement, and more calls to my service desk team whilst staff come to grips with a system that is reportedly 'quite easy' to use according to the many Mac enthusiasts out there, but probably more daunting a prospect to the millions who have grown up with a PC and Windows products all their life."

If IT departments were reluctant to move to Mac OS due to its associated costs before the downturn hit, their recession-squeezed tech budgets have made sure that any big hardware or software shifts are now even less likely.

Alastair Behenna, CIO at recruitment company Harvey Nash, said: "Unfortunately, the issue wouldn't be one of acceptance by IT but merely a reflection of the cost of implementation and the 'shock and awe' impact on my board when I proposed the capital case at this point in the downturn."

However, the spectre of Mac adoption could rise again once the downturn is over, according to Behenna.

"Saying that, I'm still prepared to give it a go in the fullness of time as the benefits are potentially significant in a business like ours," he said.

For others, however, the sheer size of the PC estate makes a move an uphill struggle whatever the economic conditions.

"The power of Apple's 64-bit processing is very attractive," Spire Healthcare IM&T director Marc O'Brien said. "However, the installed base of 4,500 PCs means that no wholesale change...