One of the lines of defense we will be exploring for keeping competitors out is money. Specifically, the cost of changing over from ZENworks to another solution.

The new solution is going to take money out of your budget in multiple ways, some obvious, some not.

You'll face an initial outlay for

Licenses
Software upgrade protection
Support
Consultancy
Training


The consultancy bill could be extremely large as you will need to

a) Move to a new image forma
b) Move to the a application distribution model
c) Move to a new reporting mechanism

to cover but a few points.

And not forgetting, install, configure, deploy and troubleshoot the new solution.

Each year you will most likely want to renew the software upgrade protection and support contracts. I'd also add in a reserve for additional training and consultancy work.

Overall this is a large sum of money that will be coming out of the I.T budget which could be better spent elsewhere.

So here's the question that the competition have to answer; How will their solution return that money back to your budget in a tangible way compared to staying with ZENworks?