Network management Toolkit

Save money by taking control of your desktops

Mark Vernon Tech Republic

Published: 23 Aug 2005 15:35 BST

Last week, PC giant Dell signed a massive four-year contract with UBS to replace and manage its desktop and laptop computers. That adds up to installation, helpdesk, hardware support, and asset management for 30,000 machines around the world. UBS is also using the deal to migrate to the Microsoft Windows XP operating system. The operation will be complete in a few months. "Dell won the contract because of the global availability of its products, the exceptional price/performance ratio, and its managed-services offerings," explained Scott Abbey, chief technology officer at UBS. "By standardising the PC infrastructure worldwide, we can achieve a substantial cost reduction." So it seems like a good time to assess what can be gained from the well-managed desktop.

Outsourcing desktop management is not new in financial services, and global deals like that between UBS and Dell are signs of a mature marketplace. However, the drivers behind desktop management have ramped up in recent years, particularly given the plethora of mobile computers and devices with which the IT department now has to cope.

The task is simple enough: to know what PCs are where and to manage them effectively and efficiently. But a simple task rapidly becomes intractable when it scales to tens of thousands of items. Perhaps this is why Dell is replacing UBS' desktop computers wholesale; it is the only way of getting to grips with the problem.

What tends to happen is that the IT department loses control of the desktop. If, in days gone by, tight control could be kept on inventory by centralising the purchasing of PCs, this has tended to fragment. PCs have dropped in price, moving them into the price range in which departments can authorise their purchase independently. Also, many companies do not track assets worth less than £1,000 — an oversight for so key an asset. And as firms undergo rounds of mergers and acquisitions, the desktop becomes a heterogeneous mix of hardware manufacturers and software versions. Bad desktop management: Where does the money go?

Generally speaking, the mess becomes an issue not in an effort to tidy up inventory in itself, but because the insurance, disaster recovery, license liabilities, and upgrade costs of managing such a complex desktop infrastructure frightens senior management. And these costs are serious. Research routinely shows that a PC can cost up to 25 times its purchasing price over a five-year period, particularly when calls to help desks escalate due to bad desktop management. An average call querying the desktop lasts 17 minutes, of which nine are spent simply identifying hardware and software.

Also adding to the potential expense of bad desktop management, software vendors have moved onto the warpath in recent months in terms of enforcing compliance when it comes to licences; substantial fines have even been levied. Disaster recovery is also an issue, particularly when a functioning army of laptops is central to business continuity plans.

The worst thing is when users have free reign over what they do with their PCs. Extra-curricular software installations can be ruinous to system upgrades, as well as leading to additional training and support. It may also render any leases void, as it counts as tampering with an asset the company does not own. Centrally managed file protection systems help lock PCs down — as well as prevent the erroneous deletion of files — and reinstall files automatically when problems occur, which reduces help desk calls.

Desktop management tools have greatly improved the ease with which large numbers of corporate machines can be managed. However, the last piece to consider is the users of the desktop itself. People become very attached to their machines and their bad habits. Which perhaps suggests another reason why Dell is replacing UBS's PCs: giving the people a new gizmo may be the only way of weaning them off bad habits!