Microsoft Beware: 2009 Could Be Apple's Year in the Enterprise

I remember glancing at an issue of BusinessWeek last spring and the cover story was "The Mac in the Gray Flannel Suit." I thought the idea of Macs infiltrating the corporate world was premature.

I agreed that the levee was gonna break someday, but that it would be five or 10 years before you would see Macs at an insurance company. A small insurance company, maybe. But big corporations? It seems too complicated with all those Windows legacy systems and IT departments that have made long-term server and client software plans based on the Windows framework. Plus, Apple has no grounded experience catering to the technology roadmaps that enterprises need.

I've read similar stories lately about Apple making enterprise inroads and spoken to analysts and users about Mac/PC hybrid environments and the increasing use of iPhones at businesses. Each week I become more convinced that Apple's slow burn in the enterprise is starting to ignite, despite Windows' 90 percent market share.

In the time since the BusinessWeek story was published in May, C-Level executives have boosted their Mac plans considerably. Some of the most convincing numbers to support this claim were revealed this week in an independent survey of 700 C-Level executives and IT managers by ITIC/Sunbelt Software that delivers some unsettling news for Microsoft.

More than two thirds (68 percent) of respondents said they will allow their employees to use Macs as their corporate enterprise desktops in the next 12 months, a rate double that of a similar survey by the Yankee Group conducted eight months ago.

Some other numbers from the survey:

Half of all the survey respondents said they plan to increase integration with existing Apple consumer products such as the iPhone to allow users to access corporate email and other applications. This indicates that customers perceive the combination of the Mac and the iPhone to be a viable alternative to the Blackberry as a mobile device running corporate applications.

Seven out of 10 businesses rated the security of the Apple Mac and OS X as Excellent or Very Good.

An 82 percent majority of corporations rated the reliability of the Mac hardware and OS X 10.x as Excellent or Very Good.

Approximately 30 percent of the survey respondents are using Macs as the hardware platform to virtualize Microsoft’s Windows XP or Vista on Macintosh hardware in a virtual environment.

Pretty convincing numbers, but it's not as if Apple will just saunter into giant corporations and kick all the PCs to the curb. Enterprise Mac integration is an expensive risk and will take time because IT departments are still handcuffed by decisions made 10 to 15 years ago when Windows utterly dominated the corporate market. Also, one has to wonder if Apple wants to be embraced by enterprises, or is even prepared for it. After all, who's been buttering Apple's bread for decades? Consumers, consumers, consumers.

But the demand for Macs at work, coming mostly from restless Apple-loving employees, is reaching an inflection point based on numbers like those from the ITIC survey as well as Microsoft's well-known perception, marketing and technical problems with Windows Vista. Also, an influx of young people raised on Macs entering the workforce should only increase Apple's enterprise momentum in the next few years.

Laura DiDio, principal at ITIC and conductor of the survey, predicts market share of Mac OS X could double by 2011.

"I'm not going to proclaim that Macs are going to sweep Windows away in a tidal wave, but this is clearly Apple's best showing in the enterprise in the last 20 years," DiDio says.

Are you an IT manager

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Wed, Dec 17, 2008 16:52 EST

Macs in the enterprise

Posted by: DB
Rating:

I don't see Apple in the enterprise anytime soon.

1) Apple has no support or plan for this. They have AppleCare but it worthless and don't cover accidental incidents which happen. The enterprise support is way over priced and if you do have issues with a server the response is to reinstall the OS to fix it.

2) No server hardware to support the enterprise. xRaid was discontinued and now you have to rely on a third party for large storage. HFS+ isn't the best file system, curious to see what happens in this area though once ZFS ships in OS X.

3) AFP protocol can't handle large loads of data, fails. We have 1000 pc's in our building and 200 macs and two Windows 2003 servers, one is a staff_Faculty server and the other is a student server. We have about 400 staff and faculty and 2000 students. Apple I believe doesn't recommend having over roughly 100 users per server, do the math. You would have to have a bunch of xServes to support your users usage of the system. The best thing Apple has going is unlimited client license.

4) Home users are thought of first.......I still have bugs with AD groups being nested within OD groups and not being able to set MCX settings for the group. (Basically MCX = GPO settings for you Windows users). Also Leopard clients that are using SMB to get to files don't fully read the ACLs right. For new students I am having to re-push the permissions for some reason to reset the permissions. 10.4.x works fine, it seems to be an issue with 10.5.x and Windows 2003 R2.

5) The iMacs are a nice product, but still have flaws.....I have been asking for a USB port on the front or atleast the side so you have easy access to it for thumb drives.

6) Prices......Apple was getting competitive but they are starting to get high again as prices are falling. We purchased a very decent Optiplex from Dell with a 22" monitor and 4 year warranty for $900. We got about the same specs for 20" imacs with a 3 year warranty for roughly $1400. One could argue that you could install windows on the mac as well, but one there is no good easy solution to doing this, Apple can't even ship a good imaging/ghosting product with its server OS. And keeping Windows up-to-date with patches and stuff would be a nightmare.

7) Alot of people mention about Apple throwing out updates whenever they feel like it instead of having a set date like Microsoft does. It doesn't matter to me when the updates come out, just so they are bug free and fix things. Deploying the updates is a breeze if they are in package format so i'm not sure why people cry about this subject.

Apple has to get very serious on its OS Server software and hardware and applecare before I see any move in the enterprise. Again I'm curious to see what happens with ZFS once its out and deployed, but I would say any enterprise entrance will be after 2009 atleast. The iPhone and the coming Snow Leopard with Exchange support are a start, but alot more has to happen on Apple's side!

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Thu, Dec 18, 2008 9:01 EST

Macs in the Enterprise

Posted by: Blad_Rnr
Rating:

DB makes some good points, but I think IT managers need to think outside the Windows box. Why Exchange? It's expensive and there are third-party products (Kerio Mailserver) that are way cheaper and actually work better with Entourage than Exchange does! You mentioned Apple's server costs, and the licensing fees that don't exist. But put that in monetary terms. There isn't a Windows server out there that comes close to an Xserve when it comes to cost. That is a huge factor.

And not being able to handle more than 100 users? I don't know what your experience is, but I have three Xserves and I don't have any issues. And you forgot to mention the huge security hole that is Windows. It is never ending. Never ending. I can tell you that having an all Mac shop makes my work life so much easier than trying to exist in the Windows world where malware, spyware and viruses never stop trying to invade the desktops. Careless users are also to blame, but I just don't have those issues on the Mac.

And lastly, there is nothing like Apple Remote Desktop on the Windows side. Nothing. It is cheap and it allows me to do about anything in a very intuitive manner when administering Macs. Once again, no licensing fees.

I see your points, and some are valid, but IT managers need to get out there and do some real world investigation when it comes to adding Macs to their infrastructure. The Windows world is expensive and if they don't take the time to see what running Macs can do for an organization, then they just aren't being frugal with the company money.

Thu, Dec 18, 2008 19:13 EST

It's all fun and games...

Posted by: Anonymous
Rating:

...until someone loses an eye or brings a BlackBerry into the Enterprise.

We've implemented an Apple Leopard server for email, calendar and contacts. All Macintosh clients use native apps and our Windows clients use Mozilla Thunderbird/Lightning.

While there have been some issues with Thunderbird and iCal (perhaps for a future thread), the solution has worked nicely. Unfortunately, a top-level executive needed two-way email/calendar/contact sync with his BlackBerry. While we tried to piece together a solution using third-party utilities, it was never reliable enough and we had to provide him an Exchange account.

Mon, Dec 22, 2008 17:42 EST

Not quite

Posted by: Small Victories
Rating:

Apple will have the best chances in small / medium business. Enterprise would be a reach due to a number of factors:

Apple has zero enterprise support - the turn around time for repair on a macbook is 5-7 days.

The TCO is way higher first on a hardware and then trying to get all your applications to work. Yeah you might have some workers that only need an OS and Office type software but some enterprise have hundreds of home grown applications that just won't function so unless you are going to spend developer hours to convert (or have an aggressive web based migration) you need a virtural application for yes Microsoft OS. So Fusion/Parrells+MS License = way too much $$$ compared to a cheap MS Box.

Let's stick to desktop / laptops there is next to zero chance of a enterprise moving off Exchange / Notes. Both are major players for enterprise email for a reason and nothing comes close when you factor the things enterprise needs to consider around retention / archive / regulation.

Also most enterpises require encryption of laptops and last I checked this is still spotty if not non-exsistent on Mac. Add the fact that management of all these systems is not up to Microsoft SMS/System Center level.

So yeah for those 25-500 shops go Mac out and enjoy users spending all day on iTunes.

Sun, Dec 28, 2008 13:20 EST

@not quite

Posted by: Cubert
Rating:

"So yeah for those 25-500 shops go Mac out and enjoy users spending all day on iTunes."

Because of course Apple doesn't have a Windows version of iTunes.....

Microsoft Beware: 2009 Could Be Apple's Year in the Enterprise

Topic: Infrastructure

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