Cutting Desktop Management Costs

In these times, when budgets are tight and all organizations are being challenged to maximize the use of available spend, significant savings can still be made in the area of desktop management. Whatever stage you are at in your desktop refresh cycle, whether it is managing an existing Windows XP estate, implementing Microsoft Vista or planning for a Windows 7 roll-out, then one thing is for certain - your desktop support, operations and information security teams are all under pressure.

Gartner¹ states that “a locked and well-managed desktop PC can be 42% less expensive to keep than an unmanaged one”. Most of our customers have already implemented significant management controls and procedures, but are now looking to take systems to the next level of management. Gartner has produced a classification for corporate desktops, which is defined as follows:

"Wide open" — Users can install applications and change settings, with little to no management tools being used.
"Somewhat managed" — There are some management tools, but it's light on processes and policies.
"Moderately managed" — There are tools and good processes and policies, but users can install software and change at least some settings.
"Locked and well managed" — There are tools, processes and policies, but users cannot install software or change critical settings”.

Total Costs of PC Ownership, 2008 (in US Dollars), Source: Gartner
	Unmanaged	Somewhat Managed	Moderately Managed	Locked and Well Managed
Direct costs	2,218	2,147	2,056	1,874
End-user costs	3,649	3,122	2,594	1,539
Total cost of ownership	5,867	5,269	4,650	3,413

The key difference between a moderately managed desktop and a locked and well managed desktop is that users cannot install software or change critical settings. However, this locked down state, can be too restrictive in many environments and impede users from performing their day-to-day activities.

Privilege Guard provides an enterprise solution for removing admin rights and implementing least privilege on the desktop, by enabling these elevated rights to be assigned to individual applications and tasks, based on policy settings. In a locked and well managed state, Privilege Guard can enable a user with a standard user account to perform authorized configuration tasks and install authorized software, which would usually require the user to be logged on with an admin account.

Removing admin rights makes financial sense, because if you can move just one desktop from a moderately managed state to a locked and well managed state, a typical corporate can save over $1,200 per annum. Scale this saving up for hundreds or thousands of desktops and the total savings become substantial.

The reason removing admin rights from a user results in such large savings is that both the IT department and the user save time. IT can save hundreds of dollars in reduced operations costs, which is made up of a combination of the reduced labor required to provide technical support, and a reduction in security management and IT operations. In addition, the user will save many otherwise lost hours spent trying to fix their own desktop or laptop.

¹ Gartner Desktop Total Cost of Ownership: 2008 Update, dated 24th January 2008. Michael A. Silver, Federica Troni and Mark A Margevicius http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=636308