Apple’s Mac OS X “is more appealing to enterprises as a desktop operating system than ever before and although it is unlikely to take market share away from Windows, the Mac could reduce the number of Linux-based desktops, according to research group Gartner,” Munir Kotadia reports for ZDNet Australia.

Kotadia reports, “In a report published by Gartner this week titled Enterprise Mac Clients Remain Limited, but Apple’s Appeal is Growing, analysts Michael Silver, Neil MacDonald, Ray Wagner and Brian Prentice, said that administrators will most likely have to prepare for more Mac systems in their environment even though OS X is ‘not a suitable enterprise wide platform.’”

Kotadia reports, “Gartner said that as the penetration of OS X increases, it is unlikely to mean less Windows PCs: “In many instances, Macs are replacing Unix and Linux workstations, rather than Windows PCs”. OS X is a unix-based system.”

Kotadia reports, “The report predicts that Windows will be unrivalled on the desktop for the near future because currently, 70 percent of enterprise applications require Microsoft’s OS. ‘We don’t expect the typical organisation to even reach the point where half of its applications are OS-agnostic until 2011,’ the report said. Gartner went on to say that in some departments, such as graphics and media production, the loyalty of Mac users to their chosen platform is so strong that a corporate migration to Windows could lead employees to seek work elsewhere.”

Full article, which also discusses “a number of mistakes” that Apple is making in courting the enterprise markets, here.
By “not a suitable enterprise-wide platform,” we assume Gartner means in companies that have short-sightedly shackled themselves to some proprietary Microsoft software or use some 15-year-old custom spaghetti-coded Windows-only abomination (or AutoCAD: same difference) for which they demand backwards compatibility ad infinitum. That’s it in a nutshell, folks, the Windows OS’ only real selling point, Windows-only software. What else besides “you need us to run the custom apps that you and others have written” do they have? “We’re less productive,” “we’re unimaginably less secure,” “we’re less reliable,” and “we cost you more” aren’t really winning slogans for Microsoft and their poor imitation of Apple’s Mac OS.

Of course, where forward-thinking exists and there is a world without fences and walls (ie. no forced, artificial need for Windows and Gates), Apple’s Mac OS X is far better-suited as an “enterprise-wide platform” than Windows because it works more reliably and you also don’t have to employ an army of IT half-wits to constantly defend the indefensible Windows OS from viruses, malware, and itself. Of course, the average company’s “Patch Brigade” also usually spends a lot of time developing ways to shackle themselves to Windows even more; it’s a particularly vicious cycle. Nobody loves blinkered IS Directors who doom their companies with Windows-only software more than Microsoft.

Don’t believe Mac OS X is in enterprise-wide use at a successful, large company? Just ask a $75 billion high tech company with a worldwide workforce of over 14,000 that uses Mac OS X as an enterprise wide platform: Apple Computer, Inc.

By the way, Gartner, Apple Macs can also run Windows natively, along with Mac OS X, so Apple Macs are actually the most suitable enterprise wide platform ever developed.