Don't fall for false economy buying workstations | Oct16 Newsletter
Everyone in business IT knows that budgets are shrinking. In an environment with fewer dollars, it's tempting to look at low price tags as the most important specification any hardware can carry. The problem, as we are reminded frequently, is that "total cost of ownership" (TCO) cannot be ignored. More importantly, total benefit of ownership is a metric that IT managers must take into consideration seriously when specifying the details of servers or workstations.
There are multiple aspects to TCO for hardware, and most of them have nothing to do with whether the hardware is likely to break and need service. For our purposes, let's assume that any workstation you buy is going to be an absolute rock of reliability and quality. That still doesn't take away the ongoing cost of owning your workstations.
How "cheap" machines become expensive
1. Lost productivity
One of the primary ways in which the cheapest purchase price can become expensive over time is through the lost productivity that accompanies minimal performance.
Managers focused on nothing but purchase price might lambaste the organisational cost of a few seconds per operation or the inconvenience caused to an employee by a desktop workstation compared to a laptop, but over the course of a workstation's lifetime, those seconds and minutes add up.
2. Reduced effectiveness
Workers who have to deal with daily frustrations from under-performing or poorly configured workstations are less effective.
Human memory is poor, especially after the fifth meeting of the morning. Handwritten notes are better than nothing, but notes typed into a laptop are surely best. That isn’t possible for workers away from their desks if their computers can't follow them.
There are still organisations with managers who consider laptop and other mobile computers as luxury items. IT managers might want to point out that mobile computers can increase information accuracy, improve productivity, lower network infrastructure costs, and enhance security in return for their perceived luxury.
3. Security and network infrastructure
Considerations such as network infrastructure cost should be considered in TCO calculations, especially when WiFi has become nearly ubiquitous, and the costs of running cable continue to rise.
IT managers who want to seriously tilt the table in the direction of mobile endpoints can discuss the cost of potential data breaches through physical intrusions. The average desktop-based client infrastructure is far less secure than an infrastructure and policy framework that has:
- Most laptop and mobile devices locked in drawers or cabinets at the end of the day
- The rest in the possession of employees trained in security
Moreover, connecting to central assets through a VPN can be far more secure than the average desktop-based client infrastructure.
Decisions based solely on minimum purchase price can come back to haunt an organisation for years. You might well find that the mobile solution is the least expensive option, after all.