Lowering Your Application's Total Cost of Ownership

The focus of any application developer interested in reducing customers' total cost of ownership (TCO) lies squarely on simplifying the user experience and giving network administrators centralized control of individual machines.

Well-written applications can reduce the costs associated with owning, maintaining, and updating a software application and its components. Central to the concept of TCO is the idea that the purchase price of hardware and software is the smallest portion of their cost during the time they're used. Installation, maintenance, and upgrade costs (deployment, technical support, administration, training, and, above all, user operations) far exceed the purchase price.

While most TCO discussions tend to focus solely on the enterprise, the underlying customer requirements can be applied to all applications, whether in the home or in the workplace.

Applications must:

• Be simple to use
• Be easy to set up
• Enable users in the workplace to log on to any computer and find their current files and settings
• Enable users at home to share the same machine while providing privacy and separation
• Be easy for network administrators to manage from a central server
• Be inexpensive to deploy, maintain, update, and manage

• Data Separation
• Desktop Management
• Installation and Repair