Mac in Enterprise Survey: Integration, management are top concerns

The Enterprise Desktop Alliance, a group of cross-platform enterprise software developers, on Tuesday released the results of a survey of IT managers who support Macs. The survey shows that the internal push from end-users, the Mac's strong performance in creative applications and lower TCO are driving Mac adoption in enterprise. The survey of about 300 IT managers was taken at the end of 2008.  Here are some primary findings:

Organizations are purchasing Macs either because end users are requesting them to (27%) or to maintain or increase productivity, especially in specific application areas such as creative services (24%). The growth in the purchase and presence of Macs in the organization is also attributed (14%) to lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Integration and management parity with PCs is important to the majority of IT administrators with 90.8% responding affirmatively to that question in the survey. 86% see room for improvement in the current management capabilities for Macs in the enterprise.

Note that about 25 percent of adoption is being driven by users, most likely from the ranks of upper, non-IT management (unless it's already a mostly Mac shop). About 60 percent of respondents expect to increase the numbers of Macs in their organization; only 2 percent said they would decrease the number.

The top issues for the managers were:

Integration with Active Directory (58%) Client management (inventory, patches, compliance) (53%) File sharing (42%) Configuration consistency (38%) Application compatibility (27%) Non-standard management utilities (26%)

There were some fun "other" responses to various questions that filled many pages in the report. Here are some selections I pulled out: “Other” Responses to: “What are the major issues that you face integrating Macs into your Windows Server infrastructure?

No great problems, just little kinks. Uneducated, ignorant Windows Admins. Much inconsistency in the MSoffice suite. OS X 10.5.5's bind function fails. The Keychain is terrible. Cisco VPN client should be shot. Microsoft‐centric mindset of management. Cross‐platform calendaring.

Other Responses to: “My organization’s Mac strategy is driven by”

Better Software and Hardware reliability. The ability to deploy dual boot Macs. Business need i.e. graphic design/video. Moving away from MS, not just Vista. We're a Mac development shop. CEO. Owner hates Windows.