In the early 2000s I worked for a company whose IT infrastructure was primarily Microsoft based. Maybe about 10% of the company had Macs, and we typically had to fight to get them. The Windows boxes required a huge amount of IT support per capita, while the Macs pretty much just worked and the Mac users didn't need much help. Not to mention that the Windows boxes were notoriously malware-prone and needed constant patches and the Macs didn't. I wondered for a long time why the company didn't just switch entirely to Macs. After all, most of the corporate apps were web-based and they worked fine on either platform. It took me a while to figure out exactly what you wrote above: The CIO didn't want a small, lean organization. He wanted a huge organization with a huge budget, because that's what looks good to C-level executives. Hence, Windows was the officially-sanctioned desktop solution.