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Can Apple Penetrate the Corporation?

Posted by kdawson on from the awareness-gap dept.

coondoggie sends us a NetworkWorld story on the prospects for Apple gaining market share in the corporation. A number of factors are helping to catch the eye of those responsible for upgrading desktops and servers, the article claims: "Apple's shift to the Intel architecture; the inclusion of infrastructure and interoperability hooks, such as directory services, in the Mac OS X Server; dual-boot capabilities; clustering and storage technology; third-party virtualization software; and comparison shopping, which is being fostered by migration costs and hardware overhauls associated with Microsoft's Vista." On this last point, one network admin is quoted: "The changes in Vista are significant enough that we think we can absorb the change going to Macs just as easily as going to Vista."

7 of 500 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This topic perenially arises by sakusha · · Score: 4, Informative

    You're missing some basic information here.
    Apple does have an Enterprise sales division and they are quite different from the consumer division, you get dedicated Apple representatives for your account. Onsite service contracts are available for server systems. Apple has always had self-servicing programs for enterprises, although the investment in spares can be a bit high.

    Another factor is your allegations that uncertainty over future products hampers enterprise planning. The switch to Intel changed this picture considerably. Apple's future products track rather closely to Intel's.

  2. Re:Ew. by Vancorps · · Score: 4, Informative

    You have some points but Xserves still aren't as capable as modern solutions from Sun, HP, and hell, even Dell. Think SAN management, it's not impossible but its quite a bit more difficult on the Mac side of the fence. Maybe in a few more years they'll gear it up but monitoring and management have always been the weak side for Apple as they generally prefer to give the power to the user. This is great for home users but very bad for corporate users.

    The support you mention is probably the biggest stumbling block for Apple at the current time however.

  3. Re:I'd like to see by jcr · · Score: 4, Informative

    They don't allow for corporate volume discounts

    Yes they do. Ask any Apple sales rep about it.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  4. Re:Are you sure? by xploraiswakco · · Score: 5, Informative

    Fire this guy, before he talks to your boss. Jesus! I love Macs - but don't think for a minute that you can use them with smartcards and automatically deployed certificate infrastructures, or any form of distributed policy management, etc. Where is the corporate distribution of packaged software?
    You might want to do your homework first... smartcards systems can be used on OS X, and "certificate infrastructures" Directory Services handles "distributed policy management", Apple Remote Desktop, ssh, NetBoot, can all be used with distribution of packaged software, what you have to remember is, some software doesn't like being distributed that way on Windows or Mac OS X (Adobe software is a good example of that).
  5. Re:I'd like to see by llf4nlp · · Score: 5, Informative

    The problem with Apple is that they do not consider the corporation to be a target audience. They don't allow for corporate volume discounts (that alone is a massive deal breaker, making them substantially more expensive than anything else); and they don't provide customer service packages that mid-to-large corporations expect.

    This is not accruate. I am an Apple Authorized Business Agent, and Apple Enterprise sales group absolutely can and does offer corporate dicounts. Check your facts. Call Apple, ask for entrprise sales, and talk turkey. Evidently, you'll be surprised.
  6. Re:Are you sure? by molarmass192 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ok ... first of all ... most enterprise applications are web based, have been for a while now, as for the rest, you're misinformed ...

    Office ... available for Mac.
    Smart Cards ... work as of Tiger
    Certificates ... see Certificate Assistant added in Tiger

    Distributed policy management ... it's UNIX underneath ... see NIS

    Corporate distribution of packaged software ... see Software Update Server

    Granted, most of this is newish since it was only added in 10.4 (04/2005) but it's all there.

    --

    Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
  7. Re:You should keep looking... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Again, the cost is more for a card system, than a whole identity and policy management infrastructure on AD.
    OTOH, the identity and policy management infrastructure on OS X comes gratis with the server OS. And the remote management and package distribution system costs a grand total of $500 for unlimited users. In my office the database needed to back the Windows remote/package management system cost more thatn 20 times that. There are no CALs for any services. I think this impact most corporate users a lot more than the cost of smartcard system.