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Apple's Macworld Looking To Corporate Users
coondoggie writes to mention a Network World article about a focus on corporate users at the upcoming MacWorld Expo. Along with the consumer announcements (iTV, iPod stuff), there will be several elements dedicated to introducing IT pros to Apple hardware. From the article: "The show has really evolved. For a long time it was a consumer-oriented show and those of us who are from the enterprise space - there weren't very many of us - would use it as a place to meet and compare notes ... Now Macintosh in the enterprise is becoming more recognized and there are tracks that are specifically for us enterprise people. We don't have to sneak off anymore."
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<a id="top" name="top"></a><h1>Apple’s Macworld opens arms to corporate users </h1>
<H3>OS X upgrade, new iPod and possibly the oft-rumored iPhone too take center stage</H3>
<p class="byline">By <a href="/Home/jmears.html">Jennifer Mears</a>, Network World, 01/04/07
</p>
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<p class="first">When the Macworld Conference & Expo kicks off next week, attendees can expect the usual buzz around consumer products – Steve
Jobs is expected to formally unveil iTV, a video streaming device, during his keynote address on Tuesday and there is speculation
that a new iPod and perhaps even an <a xmlns:o="urn:www.microsoft.com/office" xmlns:st1="urn:www.microsoft.com/smarttags" xmlns:w="urn:www.microsoft.com/word" href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/111606 -apple-iphone-rumors.html">iPhone</a> will be introduced. But there also will be a heightened focus on enterprise customers as Apple has in the past couple years
bolstered its standing as a viable server alternative in corporate data centers.
</p>
<p>Attendees can expect more details on <a xmlns:o="urn:www.microsoft.com/office" xmlns:st1="urn:www.microsoft.com/smarttags" xmlns:w="urn:www.microsoft.com/word" href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/financial/a pple.html">Apple’s</a> next release of its <a xmlns:o="urn:www.microsoft.com/office" xmlns:st1="urn:www.microsoft.com/smarttags" xmlns:w="urn:www.microsoft.com/word" href="http://www.networkworld.com/topics/unix.html ">Unix</a>-based operating system, OS X 10.5, code-named Leopard,
...welcome our new Corporate Apple overlords.
I think it's merely speculation at this point though, unless they introduce something for the corporate world that will really make people stand up. They have already started by essentially making all their machines Windows compatible, while still maintaining the OS X train.
I think they'd need to introduce something huge to really shake the corporate spenders into moving away from Dell+Windows+Office in the cheapest possible configuration. Who knows? I seriously doubt it will be an Office suite, put it that way. heh.
Macs are more expensive. A lot more expensive, when you consider you can buy a basic Windows box that is more than sufficient for most business uses for around $500.
The vast majority of "business apps", especially custom stuff, don't run on MacOS.
Macs don't have anything to really compare with Active Directory, and especially GPOs.
So...why would a business run on Macs? Unless they are a pre-press or video-production house, of course.
to start using Macs and then my company will port our software to Mac. Or is it the other way around, where we port and then our customers can switch to Macs?
Start Running Better Polls
You could NOT pay me to admin a Mac computer. I run a G5 for FCP, Apeature, and use the MS email client. Beyond that, I would not use it. Hell no.
I also (use to) maintain Windows networks. Active Directory, even with it's flaws, is so *#%&#% powerful. The tweakery that one can impliment it just awesome.
The Mac is great. It MAY even work in the Corporate world provided it was used for EMAIL, SURFING and EXCEL. Beyond that, I wouldn't touch it. Of course, if you are only using it for those applications, you just paid an additional 20-40% for the same thing a Windows box can do (yet you lose the administration).
The Enterprise world will never touch anything OS X related. It is incompatable with their Enterprise enviornment.
The Medium business class could possibly use it but they don't want to pay for the additional hardware, software (if it exists) or the maintenance cost.
The SMALL business could possibly use Macs. I know some small shops but it's always based on Application or Image. Rarely cost.
Look at all the DRMs it is pushing in iPod. Look at how they stymie interoperability. Look how cavalierly they ignore all my settings and repeatedly install iPodhelper and other junk in the start up tray. Look how aggressively they try to associate Apple executables with every damn file type there is. Make no mistake, Apple is just a Microsoft wannabe that failed miserably to be Microsoft.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It's funny to see geeks in certain countries (I suppose it's the US) dreaming about the day the Mac will be used widely. IT WON'T HAPPEN. Apple itself doesn't want to! If they really wanted compete with Windows the software would be installable in any PC, otherwise they are just a company that produces expensive hardware for "special people".
There's no way they can match the price of a standard PC + Windows, so why bother?
The world is bigger than the US, the day Apple realizes that there might be a (very) small hope.
We deployed many tens of machines in an environment largely dominated by Linux machines. Support for key services like NFS and other standard network protocols (NIS, etc.) was a horrific nightmare. Some of these issues were resolved but the key problem that we had was there is simply no mechanism in place for supporting large corporate enterprise level customers with real adult IT staffs at apple. My room full of 10-20 year veteran engineers was so frustrated with Apple's inability to address enterprise level support issues let us to nearly drop the entire investment into the dumpster. If Apple wants to play in the real world (other than the odd creative suite or home PC market) they had better learn real quick that real businesses have real IT staffs with real networks that have services like kerberos, NFS, NIS and they had better learn to play nice with them instead of expecting people to buy a wall of X-Serve machines. Just my $0.02.
surely there are dozens of gay friendly companies that are already familiar with their products! It's like a license to print money! Money to buy LUBE with!
Apple has never got it. Ever. It means Corporate or Enterprise IT. If you look at their history in dealing with Big companies, you see recurring mistakes over the past 15 years. Some examples... In the early '90s, Apple was IN BASF. One of the things BASF liked was Apple seemed to be actively supporting the platform. They chose to over look the lack of engineering tools for the great support Apple was giving them. Then Apple Europe restructed and all the close working relationship was dropped. By '95, Apple was pretty much out of every european production/manufacturing company.
I was working as an Apple developer for 10 years in engineering. Every WWDC I would argue (with the sci-eng evangelist; a position they found hard to staff) that incentives to VARs would not break into corporate IT. Productivity alone doesn't cut it. The world needs Apps, and Apple needed to bend over backward to support developers brave enough to try for that 1%. Suffices to say... the strategy has not changed. Incentives to VARs and pushing the illusory ease and security envelope.
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
Apple, its what Windows runs best on.
One thing Apple could do is sell business Mac's running Windows (either through Bootcamp or just Windows). Why? Because they have such a tight grip on what does and does not work on their machines they can eliminate many of the issues that plague windows PCs.
or they could just try to get into the backend servers... but thats even more locked up than the PCs themselves at most places
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The thing is, unless Apple can seamlessly integrate their desktop OS into Active Directory like how 2000/XP (and soon Vista) already do, they're not going to be considered as a major player in corporate IT land. They need to be able to plug into currently existing infrastructure, be centrally managed, and offer an improved Net Present Value over PC's.
I just don't see that happening for a number of reasons, asides from having to wait for Samba-4. It's going to be really tough to convince a CFO to buy new $2,000 MacBook Pro's for its users, plus copies of Parallels/VMWare Fusion, plus a Windows OS (not sure if MVL applies to Apple-based hardware - anyone?), and any other number of pieces of software that they need.
With bulk-licensing programs, it's much cheaper to replace old PC hardware with new while not having to worry a whole lot about licensing (so long as you did your homework when you spent the money). That's because you're moving from Windows 2000 to Windows XP, per say. There are very few vendors that'll let you move a license across different OS's.
Also, you have to re-train end users on how to use a different OS with its own quirks, provide HelpDesk support for dual-OS's (unless you ditch windows entirely; good luck with that), and you can't centrally manage them like you can with 2000/XP boxes in a properly implemented Active Directory environment.
Exchange support in Entourage is crap too since it relies on WebDev (IMAP/POP are your other options, which aren't good corporate solutions). Mac Excel != PC Excel. You get the point.
I do see Apple making inroads in the SoHo (Small Office, Home Office) area. Here you don't need a Domain infrastructure, workers are their own help desk, and so long as your work doesn't rely on some PC-only software, you can get by. The problem here is these customers are very price sensitive, so a Dell $500 special is much more appealing than what Apple offers.
On the IT side of things, I use a MacBook Pro with OS X, XP, and Gentoo Linux loaded on it, running in Parallels. It's my main box, and I love it for a few reasons:
1) 3 OS's on one machine instead of 3 OS's on three machines. Wonderful!
2) I personally like OS X as my main desktop environment over XP and Gnome.
3) I need access to all 3 OS's to do my work, which is pretty rare.
On the downside:
1) No docking station support.
2) No Serial/Parallel/Modem cables - all needed by IT Pro's to hook into existing networking gear, and to provide legacy support.
3) The battery sucks relative to previous PC laptops I've had (2-3 hours use vs. 5-6 on a PC laptop).
4) No floppy drive.
Ready for Corporate IT land? It still has a long ways to go. For a power user like myself? Yeah, it fits nicely.
Just yesterday I needed to price an Xserve and two client computers for use with a classified advertising system my company had already purchased (Mac only). Budgets are tight for this project because the initial revenue stream is not very large. The server software requires at least 120GB of hard drive space while Apple only offers Xserve SATA drive configurations of either 80GB or 750GB! I also need RAID 1 on this unit which means two drives. THe 2x750GB configuration adds $1000 to the system total and is excessive. I can't even do 3x80GB in a RAID 5 because OSX (as far as I can tell) doesn't support RAID 5 and there is no hardware RAID controller option.
We use a lot of Macs at the office but Apple's so called "Enterprise" options are a joke compared to major vendors such as HP, Dell, IBM or Sun.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
*** Now Macintosh in the enterprise is becoming more recognized and there are tracks that are specifically for us enterprise people ***
He made a funny. Mac in widespread enterprises will happen when hell freezes over (i.e. Linux becomes widespread in home use)
Eh? How does this work? The advertising strategy seems somewhat flawed.
From the Apple adverts I'm under the impression Macs can only blog and print photos. Maybe make a home movie or two... Other than resulting in all system administrators suddenly becoming good looking, young, thin and trendy, I don't see what real use Apple systems have in a corporate setting.
Check out this company's wrongdoing and malfeasance at:
http://malfy.org/
"For a long time it was a consumer-oriented show [...]"
Unless they're now catering to people who don't "consume" their computers, it's still a consumer-oriented show, only now they are including corporate (would-be) consumers. Hmmm, corporate consumers... a literal one of those would be nice to have around.
1) A fully working version of Outlook needs to be available on OS X. This means proper support for public folders (email, contacts, and calendars), accessing directory information (GAL), task requests, etc. Outlook Web Access sucks, having to make Mac users use Citrix to access Outlook on Windows sucks, and Entourage is a joke.
2) Proper support of Active Directory integration, without third-party utilities.
3) Support for something similar to Group Policy (or having GP objects for OS X able to get added to an existing Active Directory setup) so we can control user's machines.
We can deal with Office lagging a bit, or not having Access available on the Mac. But these three things, especially #1, are what's keeping Macs from coming into the office both here and at many other places. Given how weakly these items have been implemented over the past few years, I'm not holding my breath for any major improvements in the near future.
This is what apple needs the mini does not count as you can get in as easy as an desktop, it uses higher cost laptop parts, and it has the pos gma 950 that is very slow with vista and likely will be with 10.5 3d desktop.
Apple needs a head less desktop with desktop parts and the mac pro costs too much for basic desktop uses.
Also APPLE IF YOU RELAY WANT TO GET IN TO CORPORATE MARKET coming with mac osx for all hardware!
These days even SMBs want e-mail, tasks, calendars and contact lists that follow them around. Exchange and over the air sync services like Good Mobile Messaging provide that. When Apple can offer that they *might* get a foot in the door.
--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6
Has adopted a 'do it yur damn self' approach to desktop and deskside support. So from the perspective of which costs less to maintain Windows vs anything else, they've already made the decision that they don't care and it makes no difference. Reduced productivity is preferable to hiring someone to fix it. Of course wherever possible patch and software maintenance and updates are automated and desktop builds are standardized in as much as a such a diverse bunch of desktops are deployed and they do a good job of it(and make no mistake - corporate desktops are often the models that vendors can't sell so they're weird orphans to begin with). But if someone came to them and explained how if they deployed Macs which cost 20% more and would incur far less maintenance overhead, they'd be laughed out of the room because the suits already assume that the financial cost to THEM is zero.
If you don't believe this then why is so much IT work going to India and South America where the pure productivity derived from projects that have to connect and communicate North America with these locations is so much worse, and so popular at the same time?
Corporate car fleets are cheap ass Fords, not Camrys. We should learn from this example.
The Apple store lets you configure an XServe with 3x80gb drives, if you want, and you can purchase SoftRAID to provide RAID 5 capability. http://www.softraid.com/ is $129.
1. Macs do run XP now. 2. You can run most apps via virtualisation. 3. A Mac Mini is $599- who knows what kinda discount a corporation would get for buying 3000 of them. 4. We DO NOT know what is coming at Macworld. Maybe wait and see huh?
In 2002, Apple made it up to 5th place in servers with a 1.5% US market share. (Outside the US, zilch.)
By 2005, they were in 10th place with an 0.5% worldwide market share. (Article title: "Apple gaining momentum in server market". Maybe 2004 was worse.)
You know that cou can buy drives elsewhere and put them in, do you?
It's been well noted for the last 20 years that apples have lower techinician to user ratios than say windows. That means in heterogenius envirnoments there are relatively fewer mac IT folks. This leads to two problems 1) when it comes time to vote on things or downselect on platforms the Windows people out number the mac folks. and 2) when something really difficult needs to be done, like getting some active directory to fail over properly on a heterogenous network, or to figure out why NFS is slow off of the apple raid server, then there's less of a critical mass of expertise and manpower make the change. Without that depth chances are some problems will be insurmountable despite the system being on the whole easier to maintain.
Thus if it's the IT dept that is advising corporate decsion making you get people voting for their jobs and expertise and saying they can't solve the problems on the macs. In reality if they just had a slightly bigger mac IT department that most of the time twidded it's thumbs like the maytag repairman but was ready to fight the big fires, they could overall have a smaller IT dept.
There's simply no question that macs are easier to maintain on a day to day basis. But you need the depth of IT staff to fight the big fires and few mac IT depts have that.
Over and Over I see the same happening to the linux techs who, after being hired for unix, are sucked in to the Windows vortex that consumes all IT resources, leading us to want to hire yet another unix tech.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
pro-h+Omosexual BSD style.' In the
Apple is going in the right direction. Active Directory in terms of failover and replication still beats the pants off of open directory. Open directory is good, but it feels like NT 4's style of domain architecture: Master and slave replicas, manual promotion/demotion, and no seamless failover. Active Directory is nice, multi-master replication with inter/intra-site DC failover.
Love Microsoft or not, Group Polices rock. They are very flexible, and can tweak very detailed settings right out of the box. You can even make custom ADM templates if you are so inclined.
Workgroup manager is a start, but it is not very flexible (no ability for machine specific settings VS user specific settings). I expect OD and AD integration to keep getting better, but as it stands now, it isn't really ready for enterprise use.
Still, Microsoft should look over its shoulder. Apple is coming to eat Redmond's lunch. The next few years should be fun to watch.
-ted
Why on Earth would an enterprise server want software RAID 5? Seriously, don't even bother without a RAID card that supports RAID 5.
"Oh boy"
informative and useful info
I need to have the server here and operational in one week for installation of the server software by the vendor. Of course this installation was scheduled BEFORE hardware approval was given and IT was only notified of the hardware need two days ago. Purchasing the system (which you cannot purchase bare without drives anyway), purchasing additional drives and then doing hardware install plus server OS reinstall will take time that I don't have. Besides which why should I have to go purchase additional drives from another vendor?
Sometimes my arms bend back.
If the argument is for low software costs, than Linux obviously blows Apple out of the water on this one, not to mention there is probably a better knowledge base for Linux servers, and they can do all the same things on cheaper hardware.
On the desktop, Apple is beaten by Windows. In the server arena, they are beaten by Linux. Perhaps they should just stick to making computers for 'artists', or whoever it is they are marketing to with those silly commercials.
Apple needs to catch back up to the business software base they had with OS 7-9, There were tons of cool apps for earlier macs that for one reason or another are not available/usable anymore (largly because the transition to OS 10 proabaly was not worth the developer's efforts to go do a re-wite.)
Here are some of the many great business app casualties:
- MS Project
- MS Outlook
- Dragon Power Secretary
- Omniform
- FoxPro
- AppleWorks
- Virtual PC (Intel) (though Crossover Office has promise)
- Classic (on intel)
- Hypercard
Some that did or are making the transition are hobbled versions compared to earlier versions:
- MS Office 2007 (or whatever they will call it it - will be hobbled- no VBA)
- Noton Utilities (if only it had the features of ver 3)
- Apple iWork (read: AppleWorks beyond 6) where is the Spreadsheet and DB?
Then there are others that offer a new better version but no form of backwards compatibility (such as to convert the old files to new):
- PrintShop
- iWork (AppleWorks->Pages)
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
The article's title is misleading. It refers to "Apple's Macworld", but Apple doesn't hold Macworld, a convention company is responsible for it. Apple and the Steve Job's keynote is a big part of the attraction of the show, but it isn't Apple's show. There is nothing in the article that suggests Apple has a new focus on corporations. There is the MacIT conference, but that appears to be run by the same company that runs Macworld.
Most new application development in the Enterprise market seems to be web based and can work fine with Macintosh clients. This nonsense about "most business apps are Windows-only" is based on the erroneous assumption that just because there are lots of tiny little companies pooping out their custom apps (which nobody else uses) in visual basic that the Macintosh can't play in the Enterprise market. That's definitely wrong in both the server and the client desktop/mobile markets. There is a Macintosh in the Enterprise future.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
You reply to a post about specialized scientific software by talking about the Apple interface guidelines. The fact is that we have a couple of categories of applications, and research oriented software is a separate market, and a first version without a super Mac-centric UI is not an issue. If the Darwine crew ever gets ported to Quartz, then compiling against WineLib would sufficient as a v1.0 port.
Get it on the Mac, get it running, keep rev'ing, with each Rev becoming more Mac friendly.
No, you can't ship an IM client that breaks the UI guidelines, but if you're the only player (or one of three) in the specialized market, then you ship whatever you can and keep rev'ing. Be the first to ship a Mac version, and you'll get more sales... possibly not Mac sales though. If the CEO, CIO, or anyone in a decision making capacity happens to LIKE Macs (runs one at home, whatever), then simply supporting Macs may sell your Windows software... because they hope that when all the pieces are in place, they'll migrate to a Mac network.
People are too short sited and like straw-man arguments to avoid understanding the large chunks of the software market.
"doesn't support RAID 5 and there is no hardware RAID controller option."
HAHAHAHAHAH.
Nice one, troll. I guess I'd better through away my XServe with a megaraid card running raid5.
Raid5 is in software too.
No floppy drive... you crack me up.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Put this into a text file named SoftwareShouldNeverAutoStartItself.reg (name is optional, as long as it has the .reg).
r rentVersion\Run]
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Cu
"QuickTime Task"=-
"iTunesHelper"=-
Make sure there is a blank line at the end of the file. There also shouldn't be any spaces in "CurrentVersion", so fix that (lameness filter). Save it, and double click on the file. Problem fixed.
This is one thing that always annoys me with Windows apps. They want to install desktop icons and tray icons.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
Besides the horrors of Word, there is one more place where Apple could really make a difference and that is document management. All the solutions are hacks onto the existing Windows file system and are just horrible in every way. Using Spotlight and other technologies, Apple should consider adding a document management solution that is elegant and simple to use... And not just focus on IT pros.
I don't know, why don't you explain it to us? Do you work for a company that sells hardware raid solutions or something? Give us a cost/benefit breakdown showing why one is better than the other.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Obviously you have not heard of fink, which is a curated port of about 3000 programs from the Debian package manager. Or of DarwinPorts. Most of KDE and Gnome is in that set by the way. And the pacakge managers actually work on all apples without crazy crap like compat libs and driver patches that eat up time and money. So no Linux does not blow anything out of the water. Additionally, since mac is UNIX it's often not hard to get Linux software to compile on a mac. (and because of fink all the useful libs are there). Finally, it's compatively easy and quite cheap to virtualize linux (or windows) on a mac so you can run nearly anything in Linux at full speed and full screen. The reverse is not true of course. Virtuallizing windows or mac os on random PC hardware is often a time consuming and thus expensive chore with no assured path to compatibility. Ergo apple has much lower TCO for software.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
*Blink*...umm, you're kidding I assume?
We run all of our low I/O file servers on a Raid 5 (with a hot spare) array. You can't beat the price/utilization ratio there. Yeah, you don't get the same performance as Raid 1, but if space is a priority it's the way to go.
I think one of the single most important factors holding back the Macintosh in the corporate arena is the lack of a clearly defined product lifecycle for OS X. Correct me if I'm wrong, but nobody outside Apple seems to know, on authority, how much longer we'll receive security updates for 10.3 or 10.4.
It's difficult to justify widely deploying any given platform, even one as nice as OS X, if you don't know when the product will be forcefully obsoleted.
Maybe you should read up a bit on Mac solutions before you comment- software like Apple Remote Desktop, FileWave, NetOctopus, NetBoot/NetRestore, Radmind, HP OpenView, Deep Freeze and resources like AFP548, Mac Managers, MacOSX Labs, MacEnterprise, and of course Apple itself (I'll leave finding Apple's website as an exercise for the reader ;) make running large Macintosh installations fairly easy. There are plenty of UNIX/CLI tools and scripts out there, and Apple offers professional certifications if you want paper to show a potential employer.
> ... can buy drives elsewhere and put them in
Not really; the 'Xserve' model is intended for full-service support with
short turnaround, and the warranty is void if non-Apple RAM or drives
are installed (but the warranty includes some nifty plus-es, is served onsite etc.).
If you need flexibility, getting a server-software-equipped desktop machine
is the way to go; there's a bunch of drive drawers, and third-party addons
are not discouraged by Apple. Warranty service, though, might be carry-in/days.
The original poster, however, doesn't need flexibility. He just needs to
pay for the 750 MB drives and accept that he's getting more than bare
minimum.
Nobody Cares About The Operating System (TM).
body massage!
1. I was talking about software RAID 5, not just no RAID 5.
2. Hardware RAID 5 is faster, I somehow doubt you want your enterprise server to be wasting it's clock cycles calculating CRC values for your array. Not to mention you'll probably get more actual sockets (be they PATA or SATA, or something else) on the expansion card. Don't forget the software is generally better compared with onboard motherboard stuff and it's likely it'll be faster rebuilding an array if a disk goes down.
"Oh boy"
I know companies have ordered the Xserve with 1 CPU and 2 small drives,
and an external RAID solution - stop trying to stuff the HD into the Xserve,
just get the two 80GB Drives and an external RAID box.
Can you point to information about RAID 5 in software? I tried the OS X RAID documentation on Apple's site and it said RAID 0 or 1.
So I should have to go to a third party vendor and price separate RAID hardware and drives to put into my Xserve? You don't think Apple should be offering RAID as standard configuration in their build to order?
All I'm hearing here is that I can't use Apple as a true enterprise vendor because every solution people suggest requires doing things like ripping out the drive that came with the Xserve, installing third party hardware and drives. You think this is better than single sourcing a correctly configured server and having all of the hardware be under a single support contract?
Sometimes my arms bend back.
You are correct about the Mac Pro actually being a more flexible server platform than the Xserve. The issue is that I need the unit to be rack mountable.
And you are also correct in that I need to just pay EXTRA for equipment I DON'T NEED because of Apple's inflexibility. I also needed a spare part kit because I can't get proper support turnaround from Apple in my region (never mind that I live in a major American city).
Indeed this is exactly what I specced out. The problem was that when it hit the bean counters the parts kit and large drives pushed the system over budget by more than $1500.
I think my point is valid and not flaming. If Apple wants to compete in the enterprise market they can't just offer one server model with very few configuration options. Sure you can go to third party vendors to get hardware RAID or properly sized drives etc. but now you have multiple parts from multiple vendors covered by multiple warranties and service contracts. Great if you have a couple of servers to manage but not if you have a couple dozen or more.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
I thought Sun was the Apple of the enterprise world.
Caveat Utilitor
Apple still doesn't got it. WebObjects was one of the first application servers and it is still great and more advanced than all the other stuff in that area. Despite this Apple has shrunk all its efforts to market and support it to nearly zero. Yes, they still maintain it (since they use it inhouse too (for their Website and the iTMS)) but the periods between new versions grow longer and longer and the times when new features were introduced are long gone. They also stopped advertising for it a long time ago and it merely plays a minor part on WWDC. WebObjects was one of the apps that meant "Enterprise IT" for NeXT, in fact it was NeXTs financial butt-saver until Apple came along.
Regards
It's about time someone took notice of what is hopefully going ot be an emerging trend in the corporate world. Myself I administer a WAN of 10 user to about 7 machines. It used to be a commodity hardware+windows solution maintained by one person (me). I konw I'm opening myself up to a lot of criticism here, but for this small environment windows was a big problem. It's easy to say this, but securitywise it's a total PITA to be one guy administering a LAN/WAN of windows machines, especially when logins are shared (yes, bad I know... but we are small). Every other day I'd get calls about network issues or printers just disappearing for what seems to be without reason. A simple reboot would usually take care of whatever the problem was.
I think anyone reading slashdot would say that a reboot isn't such a big deal. I would tend to agree. I don't think the average person trying to enter in medical billing charges or look at a medical schedule of patients would agree however. In a service based industry, I am not a fan of keeping the customer any longer than ness. which means things just need to work. Something that windows was just not doing for me/our organization.
About a year and a half ago now, a friend came to me with a new 12" powerbook she had purchased with a question about configuring wireless networking. Apparently the (large enterprise) that she works for didn't have any IT staff skilled enough to figure out how to configure Airport to operate on their (windows centric) secure wireless network. So, sitting in her car in an Applebees parking lot I took a look at it (first time ever touching a mac with OS X on it) and had it figured and configured in about 30 seconds. I fell in love with it.
So after that short experience I did some reading and learning about how it works and what it is and isn't. I made a small leap. I gave my boss a 15" powerbook and ordered up a 17" powerbook for myself. After a couple of months and with the introduction of the mac mini and great pricing on the iMacs I had our organization switched to an all apple solution, and haven't had any issues with any of the machines running currently. In fact a windows application that we used to use for our medical billing and scheduling is now something holding us back, and to tackle that I use virtualization. Thankfully, the use of windows in a VM is for older patient accounts, since everything has been moved to a new mac based application ("Macpractice" if you're curious... We've been happy with it, as it runs on MySQL instead of PostgreSQL like our former application "Intergy" for those that want to know).
Even migrating everything to an Xserve just recently has proven painless and everything that I had running our enterprise on a G4 mac mini running tiger server migrated smoothly and only took a couple of hours of my time to get back to where it should be. The fact that the architechture changed (from G4 to Intel quad Xeon) wasn't even an issue. In fact the only issues I'm having at the moment is getting our legacy software back up and running in a VM so that we can continue to close out old accounts (as db conversion was cost prohibitive, so we still need to run it). And this is slightly trivial, since I don't need to run it in a VM, I just choose to, so I can take the former windows server and put it to use as a (free)NAS (server) somewhere else.
In summary, making the switch to Apple has left me with little to do outside of educating people to use only one mouse button and counseling them in their state of "culture shock" when confronted with somehting different than what they use at home or elsewhere. What I anticipated to be a hard switch has been more painless than upgrading to the latest version of windows. At the very least, I'm glad I'm salaried, otherwise I'd be making very little, considering how little I actually have to do anymore. To my windows counterparts (a friend of mine sells service contracts for PC's like craaazy), kudos to you for keeping the service industry alive.
Apple is the epitome of counter-corporate culture. Having visited the "temple" of Apple they are anything but corporate. They sell computers to individuals, not to corporations, that is their mantra. They only give lip service to the corporate or enterprise applications. They will always cater to individual. With their best selling product being the iPod, why would they need to sell to corporations. It's all about the consumer.
I need the ability to plug my mp3 player into any random computer to copy music onto and off of it, because I learn about new music almost exclusively from having friends give it to me. This is legal in my jurisdiction (Canada), so don't get all huffy about copyright on me.
Period.
Until OS X can run on Dells, it is inappropriate for corporate use.
How to remove data in Active Directory after an unsuccessful domain controller demotion.
I believe this will work if you have a DC die on you and you are not planning on recovering it.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Hardware RAID 5 is faster, I somehow doubt you want your enterprise server to be wasting it's clock cycles calculating CRC values for your array.
I would if it's faster. In any event, the overhead of "calculating CRCs" is so low on any modern hardware it's irrelevant.
There are many, many benchmarks showing that software RAID is faster than hardware RAID in most situations, on decent modern hardware. Not to mention reliability and long term support options are typically better as well.
Hardware RAID unquestionably buys you transparency (and in many cases, is worth it solely for that). It *may* buy you better performance, depending on the exact configuration and environment, but it's not a given.
> - Noton Utilities (if only it had the features of ver 3)
Why in holy freaking hades would you need Norton Utilities on a Mac? You need Norton Utilities on a Windows machine ONLY BECAUSE THE OS IS JUNK. Get an OS that's not broken and you don't need a "fixit" program.
Brett
Why isn't iWeb included in iWork? Most small corps want a web page creation tool and they might buy iWork but they aren't going to be buying iLife too.
If the software was well-written, it would be platform independent.
No, if the software was well-writte, it would be platform specific: it would integrate correctly with the desktop, follow all the UI conventions for the platform, etc. That means platform specific coding.
Now, for well-written applications, that shouldn't be a lot of work. But none of the cross-platform toolkits (Java, wxWidgets, Gnome, Qt, etc.) yield acceptable cross-platform behavior. Even Mozilla can only get away with its shitty platform integration because it works well on Windows and other platforms just have to live with it.
We no longer purchase apps that are of general interest to research unless they support at least Mac and Windows.
As well you should. Nevertheless, if the software is well-written, it's not "cross platform", it's effectively different apps for different platforms that share a lot of code.
Corporate clients *like* bland, beige boxes. They don't like tying themselves to a vendor. If Dell goes kookie, and starts insisting on putting high end graphics cards in every box, they can simply switch to another vendor with minimal hassle. Without the ability to migrate OS X between vendors, Apple is too high of a risk for any responsible corporation to use.
And that's on the desktop. Apple has no place in the server room. They bring nothing to the table that others don't do better, cheaper, and faster. The fact that they eat their own dog food doesn't mitigate this.
And the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".