Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Enterprise, Switchers
BusinessWeek examines Mac inroads in big business
This week's BW cover story puts Apple's approach to business users squarely in the spotlight, as Peter Burrows captures both the remarkable surge of employee-driven Mac purchasing for the enterprise (often triggered by staff who are Mac users at home, or as I sometimes refer to them, "iMullets" -- business in the front office, party in the home office) and what he characterizes as the mostly-benign neglect of the corporate market by Apple's sales force and support infrastructure. More and more companies are letting Mac installations out of the creative/graphics and video
While Burrows hits it right on the nose with the factors that are accelerating Mac deployment (beyond employee choice and the iPhone + iPod halo effect, the Intel platform, Vista's lackluster prospects and virtualization are key drivers) and on some of the reasons companies might hold back (hiring additional Mac-centric IT resources and a lack of extensive choice in the product line), I think he overstates the degree to which Apple plays it hands-off with enterprise users. Yes, some of the most critical resources for Mac IT are external communities and not Apple-managed, but the sales force and professional consulting arms at Apple have been quietly toiling away for years to improve the standing of Macs at the office. Big-iron vendors like Centrify & Likewise are helping Macs integrate into corporate networks, and even the Microsoft Mac BU is working hard to make Entourage a best-of-breed Exchange client for the Mac.
Just the fact of IT conference tracks at WWDC and Macworld Expo for the past couple of years, featuring Apple engineers and product managers alongside their customers, shows that on some level Apple has been grappling with the needs of the enterprise market even if it's not the top priority at One Infinite Loop. With the planned introduction of the iPhone 2.0 firmware -- which tackles nearly every pain point of enterprise customers with a vigor worthy of the Other Steve -- it does seem that some Apple execs have begun to drink the Big Business Kool-Aid.
Thanks to Arik + everyone who sent this in
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Moose said 12:09PM on 5-02-2008
A nit to pick: Is "gulag" really the right choice of words? I get what you're going for, but really, those fortunate souls in the graphics/video departments are probably much happier with their computing experiences than the rest of the overarching corporate structure of which they may be a part... Gulags were places of horror and death for millions of prisoners. If they had macs to help while away the time in the camps, they might have been happier... ;)
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Michael Rose said 12:15PM on 5-02-2008
Fair nit to pick. Updated.
YoJIMbo said 12:23PM on 5-02-2008
More Kool-aid for the Apple execs! They need to realize the latent potential and energize the Enterprise!
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oedipus said 12:57PM on 5-02-2008
Honestly, I really think Apple needs to provide some real support to Enterprises. Looking around at the discussion groups is about the best support that I could get for EAP-PEAP wireless, and most of the issues are still there for Leopard. Asking for any sort of details on specifics for the VNC server built into the OS to the average "Expert" also gives you blank stares. I'm actually a big fan of Apple, but I'd hate to say that the main reason is I'm very familiar with FreeBSD and OpenBSD to begin with.
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Icelander said 1:57PM on 5-02-2008
I work in one of the most enterprisey of enterprises, and more and more people are getting MacBook Pros. Even if they run XP on them exclusively, they're the best pro portable out there.
Unfortunately, I'm the only "Mac guy" in the office, so they all come to me with questions!
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hmurchison said 1:23PM on 5-02-2008
Ahhhh but gulag sounds so much cooler.
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kurt.tappe said 2:05PM on 5-02-2008
>"I think he overstates the degree to which Apple plays it hands-off with enterprise users"
If you were in big enterprise I don't think you'd claim he was overstating it. Apple's complete lack of future product roadmaps makes our budgeting for Macs a nightmare. Their lack of priority on Enterprise portions of the OS (read: AD plugin) have repeatedly delayed rollouts of hardware to users. ARD has become a forgotten stepchild, and we deal with its lingering bugs daily. So tell us again how active Apple has been in supporting Enterprise?
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Michael said 4:41PM on 5-02-2008
(often triggered by staff who are Mac users at home, or as I sometimes refer to them, "iMullets" -- business in the front office, party in the home office)
iMullets? Do you really "often refer to them" this way? Must be lonely. I hope you strangle this coinage in its cradle.
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Peter Payne said 4:37AM on 5-03-2008
My friend at Qualcomm uses an iBook/Macbook as do many companies with the vision to treat computers as just a tool to use. Considering what a single employee costs to hire for a year, a Mac is only pennies more than an HP laptop. I'll bet that computers with more Unix derived software use Macs a lot more, and 100% Windows shops are less likely to. I do think that Apple is right to not openly chase enterprise sales, although they should eliminate barriers to being adopted by enterprise if they can (i.e. create a layer of support for them, sales reps etc.).
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ianlive said 8:11AM on 5-03-2008
I agree that for the time being Apple should focus on the consumer segekent until they can approach enterprise in the proper way and time. U think one of the headaches with the bugs in Leopard was that Apple was stretching to release both the iPhone and 10.5.0 and I would be dissapponted if a leap into enterpise messed with what they ate focusing on in the consumer market. You can't be all things to all people and although the enterprise Market growth is inevitable, it doesn't fit with Apple current business strategy.
The BW author make a good point in saying that IT purchases are often made on purely economic figures with no consideration to aesthetics. I understand this from a purchasing perspective but feelnit is one of the most boring and bland aspects of business. I like that Macs are pretty and shiney and a stark contrast to Dell and HP black boxes. There is a certain satisfaction of "being different" and I cringe a little at the thought of every joe schmoe who doesn't give a rat's ass about the aesthetic beauty of OS X and Apple hardware having the same machine as me. Or maybe I'm just a tech snob.
And, what is the deal with large and small text size in the comments? Is TUAW trying to make these hard to read on
my iPhone?
Lastly, I appologize in advance for the spelling mistakes in the above post. No matter how hard I try, my iPhone will not let me scroll above to fix the errors and it a driving me &@#%ing mad.
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KenB said 12:50PM on 5-04-2008
As a iMullet, IT guy for a small mental health clinic, I introduced several ibooks as a more viable form factor for one program that was heavily reliant on FileMaker. Looked especially prescient when I started to get Toshibas with Vista that require a major hack to retrofit with XP due to the lack of SATA driver support in XP.
However, until Apple addresses the issue of connecting through Cisco equipment and Netware, I don't have a prayer of expanding the cross platform choice. We are too small, and too dependent on a vertical scheduling/billing package to throw over (aware that emulation is closing some of that challenge but that adds a level of cost that doesn't help the ROI equation). Was able to connect through early Tiger, and used an Alsoft Netware client which made life easy, but everything broke big time with Leopard, and I haven't had time to strip all the upgrades and backout a system to see if Cisco still plays well with some level of OS X.
The nasty rumor is that Apple is still carrying a grudge with Cisco over the iPhone name extortion, and that fixing this is a very low priority. This is undoubtedly too conspiratorial; I suspect fundamental difference in how WAP keys are implemented, and still not sure what part the gateway being on NW has to do with it. However, the Apple support forums show this to be a major issue for enterprise customers, and the failure to respond to it doesn't bode well for bid for business.
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