“You’d be surprised how many of the computers out there still run Windows XP,” Jonny Evans writes for Computerworld. “However, recent massive malware attacks mean the message is finally getting through – it really is time to upgrade your legacy equipment, if you care about your business.”
“The good thing is that this time round you have lots of choice: computers, smartphones, tablets –you don’t need to get another PC to replace a PC,” Evans writes. “You can get another iPhone for your business, some more iPads, perhaps a few Macs… ‘Apple is pervasive in the enterprise,’ said IBM recently.”
“Recent PC sales figures from Gartner and IDC suggest at least some of the big box shifters who once spun gold on the back of enterprise IT PC sales aren’t doing well today. That’s such an opportunity for a tech firm with a secure platform proposal and an ecosystem that’s significantly cheaper to deploy than Windows,” Evans writes. “As I see it, when you weigh up all its platform, security and other advantages, Apple is up there in the cat bird seat to grab some of this year’s device spending budget from enterprise IT.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The word is out, Microsoft. Your charade is over – first at smart companies and, eventually, everywhere business is conducted!
Smart people choose Apple.
Our interns have already done their jobs. All that’s up to us now is to HOIST!
Happy Friday, everyone! Prost!
SEE ALSO:
Cisco CEO ‘really excited’ at Apple partnership in the enterprise – July 10, 2017
More good news for Apple: Ransomware epidemics mean thousands of enterprises must upgrade fast – June 28, 2017
The debate is over: IBM confirms that Apple Macs are $535 less expensive than Windows PCs – October 20, 2016
Apple Inc., the enterprise IT company – December 15, 2015
IBM: Every Mac we buy is making and saving us money – October 28, 2015
Now we know why IT support hates Macs (hint: Windows PCs = job security) – October 19, 2015
IBM: Corporate Mac users need less IT support than those stuck on Windows – October 18, 2015
Just 5% of Mac users at IBM need help desk support vs. 40% of Windows PC sufferers – October 15, 2015
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Except for the One Ton Gorilla in the room – not every Enterprise app has been ported to the Mac. Hate to say it but Windows 10 has come a long ways in terms of security from XP.
That said I’d love to see business turn away in droves from Microsoft droppings to Macs & the macOS. High Sierra is going to be great!
You are absolutely correct. There are many, many companies that have internally developed software that ONLY runs on Windows. Those companies (most of the medium to large enterprises) will only move away from Windows if they absolutely have to do so. For many of them it would literally cost tens of millions of dollars or more to move to any platform other than Windows.
Yes, Apple with IBM’s help will get a larger piece of the enterprise IT pie in the next few years, but Apple had companies like Oracle firmly behind Apple back in the early years after the turn of the century and Apple squandered it. Let’s hope Apple moves more intelligently this time around.
Apple does not have to ship cheap PC boxes like Dell, but Apple definitely has to give Enterprise IT a reason to understand that initial box cost isn’t everything.
It might help if Apple sold up-to-date Mac mini computers. Given the size of the board inside the Macbook, it must be possible to make a puck-sized business Mac mini for businesses, to run OS X. It does not have to be sold cheaply – or any more cheaply than the current mini. But sometimes a full iMac is overkill for work computers.
Mac minis are perfect for many businesses. Its is stunning that Apple has neglected this obvious inroad. Users on this forum certainly see the possibilities.
You’re right about enterprise IT not wanting to move away from Windows because it would cost them millions. But the joke of it is that that they end up spending that money anyway needlessly rewriting code. Every head of the internal tools department wants to put their stamp on the place by upgrading to the latest and greatest. Object Oriented Programing … what’s that … 😒
Over the last decade the internally develop software we use has been almost completely rewritten (and, ya know, functions that once worked just fine in the old code all of a sudden are broken with the new code). And then we run through the endless user testing and debugging cycle. It’s a big F***ing joke! No one is saving any money.
IBM is making great strides converting Wintel using corporations to Mac. There are many reasons for companies to make the switch, chief among them is cost, security and employee productivity.
IBM has clearly shown that support costs drop so much that over the expected life of the computers installed, the Mac is significantly less expensive than Wintel.
The cost of porting legacy apps can be greatly (if not totally) offset by support cost savings, employee productivity gains and enhanced system security.
Throw in the utility and security of using iPhones and iPads, and you have end to end reliability to add to the argument to switch.
These reasons do not include IBM’s development of productivity enhancing iPad apps and support of the platform by Cisco, Oracle, SAP and Salesforce.
People haunting forums like this often can’t see beyond their experience to what’s emerging in the enterprise. Even small businesses operate totally differently today. The future is a bludgeon to the unimaginative, a killing floor to the entrenched.
Eh?
Zen poetry
I can hear the Windows based IT departments digging moats, building Anti-Apple walls, blowing up bridges and doing whatever else they can think of to keep Apple at bay……
as cool as it would be to see apple take over enterprise, they need a real server, with real compatibility. there is a reason why every single box in apples own “enterprise” data centres are HP servers running HP-UX, not to mention the Azure and AWS numbers they rack up.. astronomical. no macOS on them.
Best you’ll see is macOS on the end user.. a laptop or a desktop.. accessing a web based application thats being hosted on much more robust systems them apple can supply (you know, like the ones from M$ and HP)..
apple abandoned server side applications a long time ago.
Either that or running Windows either through dual boot or remote log in on a Mac.
I’m curious. What is the first order business case for Apple needing a server? It is not apparent to me.
well if fanboies are frothing at the mouth for the IT dufus to replace M$ outright then they need a server thats capable of dealing with 1000’s of users flawlessly. Open Directory on macOS Server.app has been getting worse and worse and more more unreliable as time goes by, and don’t even get me started on the Profile Manager built into it too.
Unfortunately, servers are not a first order business opportunity for Apple or any other PC manufacturer for that matter. The margins are razor thin and the potential sales volume is relatively small compared to home and business desktop PC sales.
My real point is that Apple doesn’t need the server market to take over the enterprise. As long as desktop Macs, PowerBooks, iPads and iPhones can hook into those HP servers and IBM mainframes on the back end, they will be far more effective at capturing the profitable end of business market. SAP works fine on a Mac. And with a few tweaks SQL Server works just fine as well.
Depending on how far some large companies are invested in Desktop Windows as virtual instances on a company server with thin clients on the users’ desks I would expect there would be great security, maintenance and hardware savings vs a similar PC or Mac on each desk. in that scenario servers would play an enormous part.
What the extract above did not say….
“I’ve been writing about Apple’s changing place in enterprise IT for such a long time. At this stage, I just have to hope my message is cutting through.” – Not exactly an unbiased analysis.
Nevertheless:
Apple has a huge opportunity in small to midsize companies. Unfortunately, it seems they are more interested in hip hop music than this market.
If they were interested they would spend a lot more time and energy on improving the Mac and iPad in many small but important ways.
For example:
– iWorks needs extensions like Photos. This allows third parties to extend and improve the product.
Integrate the new Workflow app into the Mac, iPhone / iPad. Especially into iWorks. This gives users easy automation tools to build and share macros to help themselves and other users.
iWorks also needs a good database that you can do merge functions between the different iWork apps. Not just mail merge.
(I don’t think the general population has any idea how popular Microsoft Works Database was with the small business community.)
Unfortunately, Microsoft has abandoned these users by attempting to force them into Microsoft Access. So they continue to rebuild old clunkers so they can continue to use MS Works. If Apple would make an easier to use, yet more powerful database that could read the MS Works format they would have a surprisingly large number of converts to the Mac / iPad platforms in no short order.
“Apple has a huge opportunity in small to midsize companies. Unfortunately, it seems they are more interested in hip hop music than this market.”
FY2017 projected Mac revenue: $26 Billion
FY2017 projected iTunes, Software and Services revenue: $28 Billion
Mac revenue is at best flat to down YoY, while iTunes, Software and Services is growing ~20% per annum.
Apple is smarter than hell to allow IBM to carry its enterprise fortunes forward, while concentrating on a business unit that is growing.
apple services revenue is very dependent on hardware sales. The larger the user base the more services it sells.
there is zero reason why a company Apple’s size can’t do BOTH push hardware and services. It’s not as if they are short of cash or the parade and basketball loving Apple leadership are stressed out. The amount of effort they put in coffee table book, furniture for charities, one and half year on door handles for the new campus, sponsoring fashion shows, Christmas trees, projects like Planet of the Apps, sex romp of Dr Dre’s life miniseries etc etc etc etc they could make kick ass Macs (which they are starting to get back to).
Also the Mac revenue you listed is so low because Apple has basically neglected most of it’s Macs for years (until recently) — not updating some for like 4 years . They don’t even advertise them. They didn’t even try to market Macs in the Win 8 fiasco years. It’s got nothing to due with lack of market or earnings potential (even 26 billion is no joke) etc, it’s rather that certain fashionista SVPs and designers at Apple didn’t seem to be interested in trucks or enterprise. Mac revenues could be double today (with commensurate increase of services revenue as installed base would be larger).
Not also that Mac revenues today even with neglect is larger than iPads.
Analysts are claiming there will be no “super cycle” for Apple. I think Apple product sales can be fantastic or meh depending on one’s point of view. I can hope for the best but expect far less than some Apple bulls anticipate. Most of the major tech companies are being tagged with unlimited growth prospects but Apple isn’t, so I suspect Apple will lag behind most tech companies in terms of share gains. Wall Street obviously doesn’t see all of these opportunities available to Apple, so I doubt investors will put money into the company. At one time the enterprise used to be a major growth opportunity. Nowadays it’s the cloud businesses. Apple doesn’t have any cloud business.
Oh gosh,
1st: Most XP machines hit by wannacry blue screened of death when the ransom ware tried to execute. So it was a very small minority that was infected. So MS BSOD bug actually prevented widespread infection among XP machines. Unmatched Win 7 machines were hit harder than XP.
2nd: Some companies, whether by being lazy, or because of the high cost and downtime of developing new software to replace vintage machines, tend to stick with XP and gasp, Win 98.
Macs just aren’t able to replace companies that have been running Windows for many years, sad but true.
Somehow I sense you are not sad at all.
Gazing into your crystal ball again? I told you about doing that! Jeez.
It isn’t a value judgement. You aren’t really sad, and your saying that was a rhetorical device. I was being mildly ironic.
“you’re” saying. 🙂
No, you’re wrong, botvinnik.
impossible.
Putting Macs in the enterprise is crazy talk – you just need a cheap windows machine to emulate a terminal – the Mac desktop hardware is a JOKE! I was a Mac devotee for 15 years. Just built a Windows PC and sold ALL my Apple stock – btw Nvidia has been doing a lot better than Apple since I did.
No regrets. The party is OVER!
Bullshit
was that a “rhetorical device”? 🙂
Bullshit is indeed a kind of rhetorical device. Calling bullshit is not.
Sitting in front of my brand new 27″ 5k iMac with Mac OS as the host, Windows 7, 10 & Ubuntu as VMs all running effortlessly… I have to call bullshit on your statement.