The information technology industry has long established that the cost of maintaining a PC in a networked environment goes far beyond the acquisition price of the hardware. Gartner Inc., a major IT consulting firm, put forth the concept of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) during the 1990s, which encouraged IT managers and CIOs to consider the total cost of maintaining IT systems throughout their entire life cycle.

For PCs, lifecycle costs include IT staff time in diagnosing and fixing problems, and communicating with multiple vendors who may own only one piece of the problem. It also includes the time and effort necessary to upgrade the systems to the latest versions of operating systems, security software, enterprise software and productivity software.

These costs are becoming significantly more difficult for organizations to bear. Compared to five years ago, almost every IT organization has been downsized and has less resources available today. These IT resources are increasingly being focused on high strategic value projects, and therefore organizations today have very low tolerance for the routine "break/fix" maintenance activities of managing PCs.

Despite these challenges, the level of service and support provided by most PC vendors has remained frustratingly low. Survey after survey reports that customers are dissatisfied with PC vendor support, and that service levels are not improving. PC Magazine, in its 17th Annual Reader Survey on Service and Reliability published in August 2004 concluded "the reliability of PCs is getting better, but tech support is getting worse." The editors found that their readers' average satisfaction ratings for both tech support and repairs dropped dramatically since 2003. Readers "complained about poor phone support—especially reps who didn't speak English well—and made negative comments about offshore support." ¹