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PCs And Macs: Bridging The Gap
Outsourcing can be more economical than hiring for growing companies.
A Information Week Reprint
by Joe Mullich
For many large companies, Macintosh desktops often remain an island in a sea of PCs, confined to creative and publishing departments. But at least managing this mix of systems is no longer a trial. IT managers are relying on outsourcing arrangements, the Internet, and their own common sense to administrate and integrate multiplatform environments.
The first question many companies instituting new IT administration strategies tackle is, who should be responsible for the Macs? Some large PC-centric companies say it's better to outsource support for the Apple computers rather than put this burden on their own IT staffs. Parametric Technology Corp., a $1 billion manufacturer of engineering and information-management software in Waltham, Mass., has some 5,500 PCs and a PC-savvy IT staff, but the 10 Macs in the creative department are supported by Conduit Systems Inc., a systems integrator and IT services firm in Lincoln, Ohio.
According to Shawn Cuddy, Parametric's creative director, the financial department was on the verge of moving the designers in his department to PCs because it thought it would be more cost-efficient to have the entire company on one platform. After convincing the department to let his staff keep their Macs, Cuddy says it became his responsibility to make sure those users were supported. Based on the assumption that he would need 1,000 hours of support a year, Cuddy could hire a part-time department support person for $39 an hour or contract to outsource the support function for $78 an hour.
Cuddy decided to go for the pricier option because of the additional benefits Conduit could supply, including 24-hour emergency support, planning proposals, and server implementation. Cuddy worried about the problems that would ensue if he hired one part-time technician who might not be around when a problem strikes--or might not know how to solve the problem. "By going with an outsourcer, we had an entire companywide knowledge base to draw upon," he says.
Miller Systems Inc. has taken over support of a handful of Macs in otherwise PC-centric companies, including Lotus Development Corp. and State Street Bank in Quincy, Mass. "It makes no sense for an IT department to keep up on the latest Mac drivers and utilities if 99.5% or more of the corporation uses PCs," says Dan Blumenthal, VP of IT consulting for Miller Systems. Usually, when Mac users at PC-centric companies call the help desk, their problems are added to a list of questions to be dealt with later, Blumenthal says. Outsourcers, he says, "provide the immediate knowledge to the Mac users that the PC population gets." This benefits the company because it lets users experiencing problems get back to work faster. If the problem is related to the infrastructure rather than the Mac, Blumenthal says, Miller Systems can alert the company's IT staff that it has a larger problem that must be addressed.
David Buschini, manager of computer and network operations for Vantage Deluxe World Travel, a direct-mail marketing firm in Brooklyn, N.Y., agrees that outsourcing Mac support is the right road for many IT managers. Vantage uses iCorps Technologies Inc., a consulting firm that works with midsize clients on Mac and PC integration, to handle Mac support.
"I'm more of a PC person, and we don't cross-train on the Mac platform as much as we should," says Buschini, whose company has just a dozen Macs in its creative department, compared with about 130 PCs spread throughout the rest of the 150-person operation. "We need expertise to help keep us current with Mac technology."
Still, he advises IT departments that outsource Mac support to make sure they know what their Mac users are up to. "You need good consulting resources you can call on, but I want to keep a finger on everything," says Buschini.
Opposite Of Outsourcing
Companies that keep both PC and Mac support tasks in-house need to have IT technicians with cross-platform skills to manage the cross-platform world, says Tim Bajarin, president of consulting firm Creative Strategies. Brian Winkler, computer operations manager of QLT Graphics LLC, a printing company in Orland Park, Ill., concurs: "You can't just add a Mac specialist to a PC-based support department; you have to add at least one full-time person who knows everything about both platforms." At QLT Graphics, Macs outnumber PCs, a few of which were recently added in order to enable employees to work more easily with Windows-oriented clients who outsource advertising and graphics work to the company.
But Winkler's advice is equally applicable to the large majority of companies in which PCs predominate. Winkler, who was hired specifically because of his expertise on both platforms, says IT departments in mixed environments will often be called upon to help users manage translating information from one environment to their own platform. In QLT's case, Winkler says, printing software often has wrinkles when it comes to converting fonts in documents created on the Mac to formats that PC users can read. "That would be extremely difficult to do if you didn't fully understand both platforms and the quirks of individual programs," he says.
The good news for IT departments who must juggle support needs for both Mac and PC users is this: Mac users make fewer calls for support than their PC brethren, at least according to some users. Bret Williams, formerly the interactive manager of Russell & Herder, an advertising firm in Brainerd, Minn., has found that Mac users at the company made four to five times fewer calls for support than PC users over the past year.
At the same time, marrying Macs and PCs isn't the hassle it was just a few years ago. AppleShare products have been developed to let PC and Mac users share data over the network from servers using the other operating system through the TCP/IP standard. For example, as long as Apple services are running on a Windows NT or Novell server, Macs can network to the server without any third-party products, and can share data and devices.
Additionally, Conduit Systems VP Dan Tully says, emulation programs such as Connectix Virtual PC enable PowerMacs with G3 processors to mimic a PC environment, including Linux and Windows 95, 98, and NT, if they need to run some programs for those operating systems. Orange Micro also makes add-in boards Mac users can put into their system to provide the similar capabilities, but with even better performance, operating at speeds equivalent to Pentium II chips.
Windows has also incorporated some Mac-like features, such as support for long file names, while developers at companies such as Microsoft have beefed up file compatibility between the PC and Mac versions of their software.
All of this has enabled users to more easily transport files between the environments. "In the past, we had to take special steps when preparing Mac Word documents for our Windows-based clients," says Michelle Noe, technology manager at Schenkein/Sherman Public Relations in Denver. "We had to limit the length of file names and add on an appropriate extension for the file type, since we were aware of translation issues when sharing those documents with PC users. But I see fewer translation issues now."
Sharing Strategy
Schenkein/Sherman Public Relations has 33 Macs and two PCs, but Noe has a simple strategy for dealing with problematic document translations that could be a help for IT managers who need to support just a few Mac users in their mix. Such problems sometimes occur when the company uses older PC programs. The public relations firm's employees must share files with many customers who use mostly PCs, so Noe provides the Mac users with a software program called MacLinkPlus. The program lets users drag documents onto a translation icon to save them as a Macintosh document, and then follow the same procedure (with a different translation icon) to convert it back to a Windows file.
IT directors stress the need to test the cross-platform abilities of the peripherals they select, however. At Russell & Herder, for instance, Williams recently found that Mac drivers hadn't been updated for the Canon monochrome printer-fax-copier bought for use in his company's satellite office in Duluth, Minn. Mac users in that office could not print anything for several days while Canon engineers worked to find a solution, then had to wait while their machines were reconfigured to support the device.
Some IT directors say the Internet has been the great equalizer in solving any remaining PC-Mac integration problems. Hearst Corp., the media company that includes magazines, newspapers, radio stations, and new media, has a diverse hodgepodge of desktop systems: old Macs, iMacs, 486 PCs, and Pentium II PCs, spread across multiple divisions.
Last year, the company decided to standardize on a travel- and expense-management program for Mac and PC users. Hearst wanted to eliminate "maverick buying" and capitalize its purchasing power by negotiating deep discounts with vendors based on volume, says Alfredo Gatto, director of the Hearst Service Center in Charlotte, N.C.
The solution was a Web expense tracking application from Concur Technologies called Concur EmployeeDesktop. Standardizing on this single system not only got Gatto the discounts he was looking for, but also increased efficiency. Previously, Mac users had to fill out their travel and entertainment invoices by hand, since the company's client-server T&E system ran only on PCs, Gatto says; that meant extra work for the back-office departments that had to re-enter the information into the system. "It was a management nightmare," Gatto says.
In the future, Hearst will use more intranet applications to eliminate platform concerns and reduce support problems, says Mitchell Lasner, director of systems and programming for the Hearst Service Center. These will include payroll, personnel, and benefits applications. An additional benefit: employing more Web applications that can be accessed by a browser may reduce the number of operating-system upgrades the company will have to undertake. This can be a big expense in a company such as Hearst, which has some 20,000 PCs and Macs.
Biggest Issues
While analysts say the big issues of multiplatform support have been pretty well worked out, IT directors say little things can make their days disappear in 10- and 20-minute chunks. "A mixed environment forces you to work out as many efficiencies as you can," says Todd Vogt, technical coordinator for the American Automobile Association Inc. headquarters in Heathrow, Fla., which has about two dozen Macs along with 900 PCs. "Otherwise, your time gets nickel-and-dimed away." In Vogt's case, his time was being dissipated by a constant stream of employees wanting AAA's database of logos converted from Mac to PC format for PowerPoint presentations.
His solution was Media4 Productions' MacDrive 98, a control panel for PCs that permits users to mount, access, read, and write to Mac-formatted removable media. "That let me bring PCs and Macs together in an easier fashion and let the individual departments handle the conversions themselves," Vogt says.
But IT managers see advantages in successfully managing mixed environments. The University of North Carolina at Asheville, for instance, has 250 Macs and 450 PCs spread among its academic and administrative staff. Mike Honeycutt, the information center manager, estimates that supporting the two platforms is 25% more costly than going entirely with either Macs or PCs.
Yet Honeycutt says he feels the extra money spent to support both platforms is worth it. "Companies that worry only about return on investment frequently miss the human element," he says. Honeycutt says giving employees a say in the tools they work with, if possible, helps them be more productive.
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