© 2009 VDC Research Group, Inc.
11
By preventing the burgeoning costs of
failure, rugged solutions more than
make up for their price tag within a five
year period.
•
There is also the unknown of what the worker could have achieved if they were
fully productive. These opportunity costs vary depending on industry.
•
Beyond costs to fix problems, IT departments burdened with fixing devices
spend less time managing and improving the IT infrastructure.
•
Soft losses include less implementation of preventative IT actions and less time
to find better solutions that could improve worker efficiency.
•
Wireless communication failure causes the worker to spend time reconnecting
their solution, reloading programs, and reentering data. Session persistence is
necessary for efficient work.
•
Wireless communication failure also causes a break in the stream of information
for backend dispatch systems. Because many make adjustments based on real
time information, this defeats many of the efficiencies these solutions were
designed to achieve.
In current recessionary times, VDC recognizes that organizations are looking to
streamline investments to gain the most bang for the buck. However, ruggedness
should not be viewed as a ‘luxury-item’ that can be forsaken. By preventing the
burgeoning costs of failure, rugged solutions more than make up for their price tag
within a five year period.
Exhibit I-2
Annual TCO Comparison for Notebook Computers:
Field Mobility Solutions
ANNUALIZED
COSTS
FULLY RUGGED
NOTEBOOK
SEMI-RUGGED
NOTEBOOK
DURABLE
NOTEBOOK
Hard Costs - Deployment Costs
$1,207.7
$978.3
$851.2
Soft Costs - Operational Costs
$1,738.3 $2,264.2 $3,717.4
Total Cost of Ownership
$2,946.0
$3,242.5
$4,568.5
* Assuming a 4 year replacement for fully and semi-rugged notebooks and a 2.5 year replacement for
durable and consumer-grade notebooks
V . P E R F O R M I N G AN A C C U R AT E TC O AN A L Y SI S
A TCO model that takes into account the soft costs (i.e. productivity, IT expenses,
and opportunity loss of failed mobile computers) will provide organizations with a
more accurate baseline from which they can make mobile and wireless investment
decisions. While this trend is not new, the recession is adding a new level of
significance to optimizing every penny.
