IT managers in large enterprise organizations believe that in several areas, Macs are less expensive to maintain than Windows PCs, according to a new survey released by the Enterprise Desktop Alliance. The survey data was collected from 260 IT administrators from organizations that had 50 or more servers or over 100 Macs.

In all maintenance categories respondents said that Macs were cost less to or were equal to Windows PCs. More than half of the respondents said that Macs cost less to troubleshoot, to configure, and to provide help desk calls. Forty eight percent said that Macs have lower user training costs; 16 percent Windows PCs had lower training costs. About half thought that software licensing fees were about the same for both platforms. Of those respondents who believed that Macs cost less to maintain, most said that the costs were over 20 percent less than for Windows PCs.

Respondents were also asked to rank integration issues that were important. 79 percent listed cross-platform file sharing and security as "very important" or "extremely important." Two-thirds said that Active Directory integration was the top concern.

Enterprise organizations will be increasing the number of Macs they have, according to two-thirds of the respondents. The number one reason was employee preference, evidence that enterprise companies are adopting so-called "bring your own PC" policies.

The Enterprise Desktop Alliance is a group of companies that provide integration solutions for Macs and Windows. Members include IBM, Group Logic, Centrify, and Absolute software.