Hi, I'm a Mac, and I'm Your Enterprise Computer

Esther Schindler writes "Not just another 'why big companies should adopt Macs' article, CIO is running a piece assuming that Macs are already on the way in the door. Hi, I'm a Mac, and I'm Your Enterprise Computer offers advice to IT managers about how to integrate Apple systems into the existing IT infrastructure, and offers hints from leading Mac OS X experts on configuring those systems once they've arrived. '[A] key element in corporate Macintosh adoption is the importance of third-party software and custom solutions. They can help smooth the way for integrating Macs onto the network. While specialists say they wish third-party support were greater, the openness of the Mac makes correcting issues possible. Don't discount the lure of the well-worn path that draws and then traps your IT staff into familiar habits.'"

Comments

Higher TCO?

[Lord Grey]

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Most of this article is pretty good, but I disagree with one of the early bits about supporting Macs in a PC-oriented office:

For Publicis Group, the Macs have higher total cost of ownership. This is because of the particular hardware configurations and the company's corporate culture, which calls for more intense support on the Mac side.

The article goes on to say that some of that may be because these particular Mac users whine a lot and need more help (my words), but also "... due to the nature of the tools we use on the Mac."

This contradicts both my experience and the experience of an awful lot of tech support people I know. In PC-oriented offices where Macs are used, the tech support folks rarely have to fiddle with the Macs. The Mac apps don't seem to cause any more problems than the PC apps, so the support costs are about the same. Maybe Publicis Group is a bit more PC-oriented than the CIO is willing to admit?

Odd...

[DurendalMac]

"The Macs require a greater density of field associates. Where we have 1-to-150 PC techs to users, we're somewhere down to 1-to-100 for Macs. I think that's due partly to the technology and partly due to the users. The creatives are more demanding and you have to be more responding, because those are the people that clearly create our revenue," says Anschuetz.

That's the direct opposite of my experience (More like one Mac guy for 700-800 Macs, one PC guy for about 100-150 PCs), but I suppose a university environment is a bit different from a creative environment (at least outside the art/music/etc departments).

Re:Odd...

[amper]

It's really not that odd. Creative users tend to need more and better support. They are the "exception that proves the rule", so to speak.

I've been supporting Macs as an independent consultant for seven years, and as part of a larger systems integration company for another five years before that. I have expertise in the fields of graphic design, photography, and audio production, among others

Creative users tend to replace software and hardware much more often. One reason is that creative houses tend to deal with files from many other companies, to say nothing of moving files around in house, and the upgrade cycle of each individual software package tends to introduce incompatibilities that even when minor can interrupt a workflow process to the point that a significant amount of time and money is lost in dealing with the problem, so everyone tends to upgrade at the same time. When your clients and freelancers start sending you QuarkXpress 8 files that can't be opened in QuarkXpress 7, you'll upgrade too. Of course, with every new software version, the hardware requirements go up.

Creative users, in order to be properly supported, require that their support personnel actually know something about their highly specialized field. Such people are difficult to come by, and cost a lot of money when you *do* find them [like me ;)]. It's rare that you'll find someone that's cross-trained at a high enough level to replace two or more people, so you end up consulting several different people for some issues.

We're not talking Microsoft Office here. This is some serious shit with big money involved and little time to dick around.

On the other hand, while there are less "enterprise" support tools for Macs, it's because they need them less. Ghost? Who needs it on a Mac? Sure, if you're doing a mass roll-out of hundreds of Macs, a multicast replication tool is nice to have, but it's nowhere near as necessary as when dealing with a Windows SID environment. Macs also break less often, and are easier to fix when they do. I would be nice, though, if Apple would do some better documentation of Open Directory. When I hear people talking about the lack of "enterprise support tools" for the Mac, they're usually approaching the problem with a Windows mindset rather than a Mac mindset.

Parallels

[Chardish]

With proprietary software, much of it in a legacy stage, keeping corporations using Windows PCs, it seems like Apple's business plan should be obvious:

1. Buy Parallels, and
2. Include it free with every new Mac sold through business channels.

Congratulations. Now there's nothing stopping corporations from making the switch.

Re:Parallels

[kchrist]

How many large companies can you name that don't have Windows corporate site licenses? That's a well-known problem actually, that big companies pay for Windows twice: Once for the site license and once for the OEM copy installed on all their new Dell's that immediately wiped and replaced with the standard image.

All they have to do is replace the Ghost image they use for their PCs with a Parallels (or VMWare, when it's released later this year) image they can stick on a file server for people to copy. No license problems at all.

Re:Enterprise Central Management

[0100010001010011]

For Mac OS X 4.5+, Apple offers an emulator named Boot Camp.

I stopped reading after that. The entire article was this bad.

The end of Microsoft's Golden Age...

[The Media Mechanic]

I think years from now many people will look back on the period of approximately 1985-2005 as a "Golden Age" for Microsoft, when they were able to rake in huge profits by illegally dominating huge chunks of the personal computer industry with the Wintel duopoly. Of course for many of us we will look back on this period as "The Dark Ages" of little or no competition in the PC marketplace. Really what we are seeing now, as Apple and other firms like AMD start to make inroads into the enterprise market, is a return to normalcy. Competition on price and competition on features is a healthy state for the computer hardware & software industry. Capitalism and our free economy is really founded on the notion that there is not a central power (be it a totalitarian system of government, or a monopolistic corporation) that can control an entire sector.

Also, please take a look other major industries that have healthy competition - Plenty of airlines -> lower airfares. Plenty of car manufacturers -> lower car prices. Plenty of restaurants -> reasonable cost of food.

The idea that there is only one group of people in the world smart enough to create a reliable and modern PC operating system is simply a falsehood.

Re:The end of Microsoft's Golden Age...

[fyngyrz]

there frankly isn't a whole lot of competition

Oh, that's not true at all. You just aren't familiar with the competition.

Re:Openness?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

What do they mean by "openness" here.

I suspect they mean that Macs integrate with all the open standard protocols and tools that Linux does (think LDAP) instead of the MS controlled closed protocols where interoperability is always a little broken since it is achieved via reverse engineering.

Stereotyping of "Creatives"?

[ErikInterlude]

"The Mac itself, the nature of the Mac, how it works and how it looks, is actually more conducive to the creative mindset. But those same things have also created a religious factor where the typical 'creative'--they can't even touch a PC keyboard. I'm being actually serious," says Christian Anschuetz, executive vice president and CIO of Publicis Groupe, which is based in Paris.

I haven't finished the article yet, but while I can believe this mindset being prevalent in years past, but I don't think I've met any designer in the past 5 years or so with such an anti-PC attitude. I've worked on a mac since my freshman year in college, but still had no problem sitting down and doing design work on a PC. And this was over a 2 year period. Using CorelDraw because my employer was Canadian and apparently Corel is a Canadian company.

Likewise, I've met plenty of PC users who are willing to sit down with a Mac if that's what the job requires. I just don't think this idea of "He's creative so he HAS to use a Mac" is valid anymore. You do the job with the tools you have. At my current job, once the IT dept. found out that I was going to be hired they immediately went out and bought a Mac. If I had been asked I would have said I could work in either platform. It doesn't matter as long as I have the tools to get the job done.

Sure, PC and Mac users like to make jabs at each other every now and again, but the few times I've met hard core Mac/PC users, they've been jackasses who weren't nearly as productive as they'd like to believe.

Anyway, just my thoughts.