“Late one Friday when no one was looking, Apple quietly updated the business support section of its website, Apple at Work,” Jonny Evans writes for Computerworld. “The move wasn’t widely advertised, but it reflects the growing importance the company places in the enterprise markets.”
“It wasn’t long ago that saying Apple products have a place in enterprise IT would open you to acres of ridicule,” Evans writes. “That’s not the case today, as Apple becomes an essential item in every enterprise tool kit. IBM calls Apple ‘pervasive in the enterprise,’ while Jamf CEO Dean Hager notes that his own internal company research suggests 75% of enterprise users would choose a Mac for their next computer if given the choice.”
Evans writes, “The newly-updated Apple at Work site provides new chunks of data, interesting videos, fresh insights from business leaders and a great deal of help and advice designed to help enterprise users apply these technologies across their industries.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Smart companies equip their employees with Apple products.
Note: Today is Martin Luther King Day in the U.S. and the markets are closed. As such, we will have limited posting today.
SEE ALSO:
Mac sales jump highlights purchasing pattern change; ‘great traction in the enterprise market’ seen – November 7, 2017
General Electric to offer Apple Macs to 330,000 employees as company standardizes on iOS for mobile – October 23, 2017
Enterprise use of Apple Macs primed to expand ‘exponentially’ – September 6, 2017
Microsoft’s Windows is doomed – September 1, 2017
Steve Jobs’ plan to take back the personal computing business from Microsoft proceeding apace – December 7, 2009
Steve Jobs: ‘Apple’s goal is to stand at the intersection of technology and the humanities’ – October 18, 2005
Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ ultimate goal: ‘to take back the computer business from Microsoft’ – June 16, 2005
Apple should partner with parallels, VMware, and Microsoft to allow “1 click” purchase and installation of windows for those who have a few legacy apps that must be run under windows. That would be a win for everyone including Microsoft and, believe it or not, companies like Dell. (If nothing else it would get the computer fools off windows machines and make support for Dell products go down.)
Apple’s “vision” of enterprise IT, unfortunately, is based on their vision of the home.
Enterprise IT is concerned with MANAGEMENT OF INFORMATION, INFRASTRUCTURE, TECHNICAL SUPPORT, USER MANAGEMENT, IN HOUSE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT, S E C U R I T Y, and so on.
IT is not about how many songs you can carry in an iPhone or emojis or TV content, or streaming music, or animojis, or not being able to find the goddamn MAC address of a device.
IT is about multiple users per device and mobile device management, and SYSTEM INTEGRATION that works, and reliable and secure REMOTE support of stationary and MOBILE devices.
Internally I don’t believe Apple has any sort of eye on the enterprise. Not even the small one anymore.
Healthcare indeed. TO THIS DAY I CAN’T EVEN OPEN STANDARD X-RAY IMAGES ON A MAC.
The most powerful enterprise app Apple has is FileMaker and they treat it like a red-headed stepchild.
I’m glad the IBM relationship has been fruitful, but it’s an astonishment considering the dearth with the familiar pro desktop and consumer cloud confusion. We’re going get some good movies though.
“ TO THIS DAY I CAN’T EVEN OPEN STANDARD X-RAY IMAGES ON A MAC.”
Just calm down.
Depends what you mean by “standard”.
Old style ‘developed’ X-ray images can be digitized.
DICOM/.DCM files can be viewed in… http://www.osirix-viewer.com/ContributionOsiriX.html
Batch file converter…
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/espresso-ray/id590551201?mt=12
My local community hospital doctors have used Macs for years using this software. There is an iPad version too.
Not certified for diagnostic use – that is still windows software only atm.
There is plenty of stuff other than “legacy” apps that either do not run or do not run well on the Mac. Plenty of enterprise and professional software that is Windows only and when they tout iOS support it is many times only via Citrix running a remote Windows session.
Apple never seriously chased the enterprise market and abandoned the HW and SW years ago. Interesting thing is that Windows 10 Pro is getting more stable and secure and mac OS seems to be becoming less so.
Drives me crazy when I have to use Citrix on our Macs because the developer of the software needed is too lazy.
Will there be a return of Xserve hardware in the future?
Hah! I got bit by and their dumping of the XSAN once.
Never again.
We bought an Xserve. Not falling for it again Apple.
Oh, and your Server OS has gone down hill since Snow Leopard Server.
Where’s the Apple Server software if they’re so serious?
As I have said before, Apple does still ship Apple Server software, but it is not what it was before. It’s basically a set of bolt-ons for the standard macOS.
I don’t see Apple going back to a full, from the ground up build of Mac Server OS. Ever. In my wildest fantasies Apple would bring out the Xserve hardware and a full up server OS, but that is just that: fantasy.
Well macOS is totally capable server. You can run it via Terminal. There is everything what you need.
As a Apple Certified System Admin 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6, I beg to differ.
Apple does not even use Macs for servers. Windows and LINUX. Used to run some on Solaris.
Indeed.
Then once had a huge farm of Xgrid Macs I think, but Apple left everyone who use that and XSAN to wither on the vine. Never again™
What? Apple leave it’s customers hangin on the vine? No way.
Hope they also put some serious emphasis on schools .
Too many kids are being Googlized … not good !
I think the schools are a lost cause. Apple will never sell hardware at the prices that Chromebooks are going for, and I don’t see them investing in multi-platform support for the backend like Google has done with Classroom.
Sadly you’re correct about the crapbooks! We switched here and what a pile of tung. But they are purchased for the price!!
Yeah, our local school district just sent all the middle and high schoolers home with Dells that look like bricks.
“… research suggests 75% of enterprise users would choose a Mac …”
Yes, *USERS* would choose a Mac. That has been reality for the majority of the last 20+ years. But in large Enterprise class facilities the *USERS* very rarely get to choose what they actually use.
And, if people actually checked they’d find that while IBM is pushing Macs and iPads and iPhones much, much more than they used to, they still bundle more Windows based systems to large Enterprises than they do Apple hardware. (even a small fraction of the time is much, much more than 0% of the time of 15 years ago, right?)
If Apple is truly serious about making huge headway in the large Enterprise markets it could start with somehing extremely simple: deliver an email system that is more bulletproof and less idiosyncratic than Outlook. Apple delivering its own email servers would be great, but even usIng Outlook on the backend (with 100% bulletproof integration) would be a step in the right direction.
Then after Apple conquers that, it could move on to more useful things leading to more meaningful inroads into large enterprises.
Apple’s enterprise effort is minimal, and will remain so, for very strategic reasons. Windows is the morass of spaghetti code that it has become precisely because of them being hostage of the enterprise clients. While MS kept building backwards-compatibility with DOS and 16-bit Windows apps into Windows 95, NT, 2000, Vista, 7, 10, Apple kept moving forward and dropping old stuff with little regard for legacy software. Over the past decades, they executed 68k to PPC, System 9 to OS X, PPC to Intel, 32-bit to 64-bit, leaving the old stuff behind after a very short period of bridge period (some cocoa/carbon compatibility mode, rosetta emulation or similar). It would be literally impossible for them to keep dropping support for old technology if they were anywhere nearly as deeply entangled with corporate and government clients as MS / IBM were/are.
Mac OS is what it is (superior, leaner, more secure, more efficient, more intuitive platform) exactly because Apple could afford to move it forward without being dragged back by anyone. Adobe, Quark, Macromedia and other developers moved along, kicking and screaming, but had no choice, if they wanted the coveted Mac users.
Apple will never compromise their platforms by caving to enterprise clients.
My life flashed before my eyes with your compact recitation of what happened. In my career, begun at the age of twenty in 1986, I got to experience the sad demise of various DOSes and the rise of GUIs. Skilll sets shifted dramatically, and Human Resource departments were stressed to rewrite job descriptions to account for swiftly evolving standards of expertise. What we now call IT (Information Technology) departments were heavily consulted by HR to rewrite these hiring standards. A natural bias thereby was transmuted into policy and a monolithic culture was reinforced and still exists to this day, like riprap bulwarks on rushing rivers. You hear it in the cries of the naysayers, in the sceptical attitude of market analysts.
I say the evolution of computing, like the trickling of water, like everything else, takes a path laid out by no one, and by everyone. Apple has carved a Grand Canyon, yet there still persist geology deniers.
lol, okay. must be using that $200b in offshore cash!
I’ve never understood why Apple didn’t fund efforts to port over all of the critical Enterprise apps leaving no excuses left for IT doofuses. Stuff from Oracle and whoever else. Enterprise app parity between Windows and Macs. The amount of money expended to do that would probably be a pittance and would be made up for by increased Mac sales to Enterprise.
Apple has a vision more transcendent, more shrewd and farseeing, than armchair economists. Either that or thery are fumbling in the dark and still managing to print money through an accident of nature. But either way, your point is valid—they care more about something on their radar other than you or me.
For hardware, most enterprise business is very low margin. All the money is made on software so the profits go to SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, etc.
Apple would not be gaining much by putting major resources into enterprise. Any Mac sales in that space would be at a seriously reduced price, and the customer service requirements are extensive for large companies.
Yes but with 200-300 billion in the bank such an effort would still be chump change and change the perception even better that Apple is an Enterprise player and alternative. Whatever requirements could be tailored for the Enterprise separate from consumers.
I don’t think that seeing more office drones carrying Macs instead of Dells or Thinkpads would really improve the perception. May even hurt it.
If anything, Apple could consider an entirely different line completely separate from Mac/Macbook except running the Mac OS. However, as the OS is really the differentiator, I can’t see how it would do anything except dilute the brand (and earnings) just like the Mac clones did back in the day.
When Apple makes a workstation I can upgrade and repair with standard parts, give me a call.
Apple will never make that call. Apple seems to hate using standard parts because they can’t build a user moat that way. Apple will only build products for the high-end profit margins.
Get up to date, damn it. Your pessimism is understandable, but if you are a serious investor you should spend less time blubbering and more time looking at industry adoption rates. Don’t be an unwitting shill for the competition.
I work at the largest US defense contractor and Apple is moving back in fast. First were the corporate iPhones, followed by iPads and now I’m seeing 15″ laptops. When CAD software like Creo Pro makes a Mac Version I’ll be switching over at work too.
What has me concerned is that I have several family members that work in TV production, and their employers have moved entirely over to PCs from what would have been all Macs running Avid 10 years ago.
Yet Apple is trying to slowly kill the Mac! I would say the opposite is happening! Apple may be gaining with iPhones and iPads, but certainly not the Mac that I am aware of. Apple is trying to kill it.
If Wall Street doesn’t recognize Apple’s foray into IT, then it isn’t happening. I think Apple’s only concern is selling more iPhones and iPads to corporate users and that’s about it. Apple probably doesn’t make enough profits from corporations to be worthwhile. It’s a lot easier to fool consumers into spending more money, but not so easy to fool professional bean-counters, especially when it comes to low-bidding.
You’re wrong and you know it. Apple IS the Mac. They’ve taken a slight, golden, detour by infusing the Mac OS into palm-sized devices, incidentally creating an explosive new industry we now call mobile computing. The detour ended recently with their announcements of the iMac Pro and the forthcoming Mac Pro. What’s more, their foray into miniaturisation, which yielded the phenomenal A-series CPUs, has befogged and befuddled industry observers, who never had any imagination to begin with and still can’t accept that Apple could do it again and again. They are such sad, conscribed little men, that could never credit Jobs, or Tesla or Edison, with the godlike insights they obviously possess.
Whatever. With Tim Cook at the serious has little meaning.
On the other hand, your post has sooooooo much meaning. Thanks for the deep insight. If only Apple could make you CEO.
This is a joke, right? The minute they discontinued the X server line, they gave up on ‘Enterprise’ and gave that all back to MS.
And Microsoft is doing SO much better than Apple because of it.
Apple still has one major roadblock between it and Enterprise IT: their own hubris.
Apple doesn’t really believe in “the only wrong answer is the answer that doesn’t work” – they believe that THEIR answer is the only right answer. This is well-exemplified by Apple’s approach to two-factor authentication – if you’re not using another Apple device, two-factor doesn’t exist, never mind that every single person in your workforce has a smart card token, and that every computer, including Macs, has a smart card reader.
There is NO ability, beyond what is provided by third parties, to use alternate methods of two-factor authentication, and some functions – notably data-at-rest protection, known in the Apple world as FileVault – SPECIFICALLY excludes any protection but username/password, a method which is prohibited by any organization which actually takes security seriously.
I sincerely hope that Apple wakes up and smells the coffee; the superiority of their platform will only let them slide so far.
Is this an April fools posting?
Seriously, I have used Macs in our small business for over 25 years. Remember fondly have our computers network over telephone lines in our office before it was even a consideration for Windows.
Maintaining our Macs and our Mac servers has gotten harder over the past five years. “It Just Works” is no longer an accurate slogan.