PC prices continue to fall, yet the total cost of ownership (TCO) for PCs in business environments continues to be quite high. While the cost of PCs is part of doing business today, the cost of deploying new PCs can be daunting enough to persuade large enterprises to delay upgrading their PC environment and thus delay the benefits that technology upgrades yield. In addition to the cost of the PCs themselves, companies must also face up to the cost of deployment activities. IDC interviewed 200 large enterprises about their PC deployment practices and found that, on average, the cost of deployment activities was $527 per PC but often ranges to as high as $700 or more.

IDC's research not only tracked the costs of deployment but also identified critical deployment activities (staging, logistics, applications loading, user state migration, image loading, program management, and post-deployment support) and specific practices related to those activities. These activities and practices form the Dell PC Deployment Optimization Model. The research shows that companies that optimize their deployment practices enjoy significantly lower costs to deploy PCs, as much as 62% less (over $400 per PC) compared with companies with basic deployment practices.

Leveraging Dell's PC Deployment Optimization Model, IDC structured an approach for optimizing PC deployment. CIOs can use this research to map out a plan to reduce their organization's PC deployment costs while deploying faster and with less disruption to workers using PCs.