Even if one minute a day is lost to productivity drains because of PC horsepower allocation to security scans and remediation, the cost over a year across a medium-sized enterprise adds up quickly. A 10,000 employee operation would face over $10M in direct productivity losses alone. As an early trigger for expensive PC hardware refresh is an onslaught of help desk calls, many companies find that they can actually extend the hardware refresh cycle out another 12–24 months simply by employing a security solution that does not tax the PC as heavily.
The indirect costs associated with brand reputation and opportunity losses add untold thousands of dollars per year as well. Further, some institutions under green initiatives monitor power consumption related to security measures favor solutions that use less energy. As such, forward-thinking enterprises are looking beyond the software license fees when evaluating security software alternatives.