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Apple Partners With Cisco To Boost Enterprise Business
An anonymous reader writes: Apple and Cisco announced a partnership aimed at helping Apple's devices work better for businesses. Cisco will provide services specially optimized for iOS devices across mobile, cloud, and on premises-based collaboration tools such as Cisco Spark, Cisco Telepresence and Cisco WebEx, the companies said in a statement. "What makes this new partnership unique is that our engineering teams are innovating together to build joint solutions that our sales teams and partners will take jointly to our customers," Cisco Chief Executive Chuck Robbins said in a blog post.
Apple partners with Crisco to make a delicious pie!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Cisco Engineers massively prefer Macs over PCs to the point that those that use anything other than Macs are rare. By improving their products on Macs, they are helping their employees even before any clients are considered.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
It's a rough news day. This press release is another meaningless Apple Tries To Wear A Suit And Tie tome. Coming just behind the "Oh Gosh I loved Windows 95", post, it must be another dozer week-before-a-US-Federal-Holiday Monday.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
How about, well, learning to support an enterprise? Stop treating every device like it is a consumer toy. Offer some real management tools, don't require an Apple account to do everything on your computers, etc, etc, etc.
It always amuses me when I see Apple talk about the enterprise space because they have done such a shit job supporting OS-X for the enterprise for so long. You can make it work, of course, and there are plenty of 3rd party tools, many very expensive, to help but it is all your own doing. Apple themselves seem to view each device as an island, property of a single consumer to be used as a toy and thrown away when the next shiny toy comes along.
Of course what they really mean here is "We want big businesses to buy our stuff, but we don't want to actually go through the trouble of supporting them."
What OS are the routers going to run? iOS or IOS?
These devices don't belong on an enterprise network anyway. They're allowed on a guest network and that's it.
Who in their right mind is going to allow these personal devices on a company network? Haven't we seen enough bad things happen with stuff like this?
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I would be perfectly happy if they just said "Know what? OS-X is a home user OS. We don't support the enterprise. We are going to remove support for these enterprise features with the next version. Use something else." That would be great because then I could tell all the Macheads to suck it up and use Windows or Linux.
However Apple likes to play at enterprise support, they've played at it for years. They act like they care, but as you note they half-ass it to the extreme.
Even internally. I remember not long after Apple stopped the Xserve I was talking to one of their engineers and I ask him what they were going to do. Apple had started doing the MS thing of "eating their own dogfood" and was heavily using OS-X on Xserve for their own stuff. He said "I have no idea. They didn't tell us this was coming. We'll probably start using IBM hardware again."
It drives me up the wall as we waste an inordinate amount of time dealing with Macs because people want a shiny toy and can't understand they are unsuited for enterprise use.
Most people who work in enterprises don't work in IT so they don't care about admin tools etc. Most people work in marketing, sales, accounting, finance, logistics or manufacturing and all the software for all those departments runs on Windows. Middle market accounting software for Mac? Does not exist. Manufacturing/inventory control software for Mac? Nope. Contractor estimating/job costing? You get the picture.
Hold on. Is it April first? Because that's GOT to be a joke.
Apple doesn't want, and cannot handle enterprise business.
Because enterprise customers, spending millions, aren't as forgiving of Apple's little "oopsies" the way their fanboy userbase is.
And having technicians constantly going "Well try this piece of software and see if it does what you want" would get old quickly.
The Mac developer base couldn't support it (bless their eclectic little hearts...)
Now the elephant in the room. Apple's inherent undependability.
People have been throwing a shit fit for the past few years about Windows 8 and the lack of a START MENU. The reason Windows 8 didn't take off was because enterprise was NOT willing to absorb retraining costs.
What happens when Apple decides to go its own way again and literally changes PLATFORMS (a'la PPC to x86) at some point in the future? You think enterprise customers are going to take a risk like that?
FUCK NO!
Apple's cut themselves a foofy little niche amongst cool kids, artsie-fartsie types and people who don't know any better. They simply aren't equipped to deal with anything at the enterprise level.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
but why should anyone have to pay more extra for Apple products?
Because there is actually a real difference between price and value. Something that is sadly misunderstood among some of the Slashdot crowd.
In the long run you have a totally better situation with Linux over Apple.
Until you want support. Then its RHEL or ???
And RHEL sort of defeats the whole idea of Linux as a F/OSS OS, doesn't it?
This press release is another meaningless Apple Tries To Wear A Suit And Tie tome.
I don't know how long, or how closely, you have been following Apple news. But to those who have been watching, this is one of the extremely rare times you will find an "Apple in business"-type story. In fact, if you wanted solid proof that Steve Jobs has left the building, this is it.
Under Jobs, Apple blatantly ignored the business-end of its business. Witness the fact that Jobs basically starved the Server version of OS X, and the hardware to run it on, until the hardware was killed-off outright, and OS X Server became just a package of utilities to be added to OS X "client".
But Apple isn't stupid. The massive influx of iOS devices (and Macs, too) in business environments has (finally!!!!) made them sit-up-and-take-notice.
Under Jobs, one of Apple's mantras was that "IBM was teh evilz!" and represented everything that Apple was not. However, as I said above, the BYOD movement in corporate America (and in other places, too) has caused many, many, many Apple products to spend at least part of their days being part of corporate networks, working in Exchange-Based email/calendaring environments, and so forth.
So, while not exactly enjoying that suit-and-tie, Apple is finding ways to make their products work, and even excel, in the business world.
Bottom line: Watch out Windows; because Apple has quietly been displacing your foothold in business, and in an increasing number of small businesses, there isn't a Windows computer to be found. Don't believe it? Watch Shark Tank, The Profit, and other "Millionaire-Maker" type shows, and just pay attention to the percentage of (usually covered-over) Apple Logos and OS X Desktop screenshots there are. It's truly amazing. And because the Logos are covered over, you can be assured that Apple isn't providing those computers as "set dressing".
So, there really is change in the air, particularly in "young" businesses. And that change is moving solidly in Apple's direction.
And BTW, I don't think I have EVER seen a Linux system on TV, other than a program that was specifically about Linux, or when they wanted to show a "Hacker" system (like on Mr. Robot). Never. And never on one of the "Millionaire-maker" shows.
This release is a bag of foam and goo. It's for the PR, and maybe the stocks of both won't slide any more than they have.
Apple risks plenty, as does Cisco, by implementing still more proprietary protocols--- and the details if you'll notice, are scant.
Apple's relationship is fanatically tied to its users. Users count. It's all about the users. The genuinely laughable business response is to take orders. That's it. Apple's Xserve and Xsan, nice as they might have been, are now filling dump sites across the world.
Both of these companies make great stuff, don't get me wrong. Unless they go proprietary and this event is unlikely, this was all for the analysts, 'cause not a thing is going to show up that's meaningful or tangible. For better and worse, Microsoft's AD is what binds businesses together. It's a reality. I don't like this reality but show me something that might break that lock. Sun, Apple, Novell, and many others have tried to break that lock. Do it and you can have the keys to the enterprise kingdoms.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Unless Apple comes up with some real give away hardware deals. They will never gain much in enterprise as a whole.
Since a lot of companies now have BYOD programs, Apple doesn't have to suck corporate cock like Dell and HP do. The employees like their Apple products so much THEY pay for them out of their OWN pockets.
This is where I don't see Microsoft doing enough, but I still do not see enterprise leaving Windows for OS X or IOS in droves.
Actually, it's much more quiet than that. More like a steady drip. But just like those steady drips that you see on nature-based TV shows, when enough time goes by, you look up and that little drip has carved a thousand-foot canyon. Except in this case, the canyon is only going to take about a decade, and its well underway even as I type.
Excuse me; but did you run out of your meds, or just decide to stop taking them?