Off Topic: Windows in a Mac environment

Usually it's the other way around. :) Recon?

As of right now, either manage them manually or convert the physical machine to a Fusion virtual machine and throw out the PC.

I would do a P to V and run them under a virtual ESXi host. A beefed up Mac mini does a nice job.

I hadn't thought of that for servers, so far I've mostly just dealt with client editions of windows that are on people's desks.

So VMs are cool, but I don't know that I'll be able to change out the hardware in this instance.

Where I'm at is we just merged with another company that's primarily PC based, and they're really impressed with how we can just push out settings to the Macs via casper, and I was basically told "you need to do that for our PCs as well."

I'm not sure how many Windows computers your are trying to wrangle or what settings you'd like to adjust, but if someone was to generally ask me to manage a bunch of Windows computers for free/cheap, I'd go the PowerShell/WMI route.

I don't know how familiar you are with scripting, but there's not much you can't do with that combo. There are many, many resources out there to help get you started if you were to give it a whirl.

What computer management--if any--was the other company that is primarily PC-based using?

Meraki has a free cloud based management solution that will work for PC's. It won't run for me behind the department's firewall but it looked very promising in the tests that I performed on a direct connection.

Meraki has recently been purchased by Cisco so I'm not sure about the future for their free offering but last I heard they were still offering it for free.

Cheers,
Chris.

What computer management--if any--was the other company that is primarily PC-based using?

None.

It sounds like you need to demonstrate the cost differential between setting up Windows management infrastructure (server hardware/software, CALs, FTE(s) for Windows SysAdmin(s), etc.) vs. just swapping out what few PCs you have with new Macs and rolling them into your JSS.

"You need to do that for our PCs as well," sounds like a typical bean-counter response. They should respond well to this kind of approach.

Good luck!