“Leading IT bosses claim that despite Apple’s recent revival – largely around its consumer products – the company will continue to have little impact on corporate IT strategies,” Andy McCue reports for Silicon.com. “After coming back from near oblivion, Apple’s recent successes have been based around the iPod, new desktops and business hardware and a relatively virus-free platform.”
“We asked the silicon.com CIO Jury whether this had led them to rethink any aspect of their technology operations or if it challenged the traditionally-held notion that Apple has no place in corporate IT departments. Rob Neil, head of ICT at Ashford Borough Council, said that as far as corporate systems are concerned Apple is ‘an irrelevance,’ while Richard Yeo, CTO at easyGroup, simply stated: ‘Proprietary hardware and software, overpriced, few applications,'” McCue reports.
“Cost was an issue highlighted by other IT chiefs. Gavin Whatrup, IT director at advertising agency Delaney Lund Knox Warren & Partners, said that while Apple’s strengths are in ‘great technology,’ graphics and design, the company needs to address supply, price and integration issues to break into the corporate mainstream. Richard Steel, head of ICT, Newham Borough Council, was more succinct. ‘[Apple is] still an expensive fashion accessory in the consumer market and niche for business,’ he said,” McCue reports. “A couple of IT bosses, including Ted Woodhouse, IT director at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said the only reason there are few malware exploits for Apple software is down to a lack of market penetration.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The IT guys will be the last to fall because their job security rests largely on Wintel deficiencies. If the world’s companies used Macs running Mac OS X, the IT staffing needs would plummet and the attendant power that having large staffs bring to IT honchos would evaporate as well. They are scared, so scared, in fact, that some even feel the need to fall back to the long-ago-disproven “Security via Obscurity” myth (see related articles below). Can you believe that Ted Woodhouse guy actually has a job as an IT Director? Simply amazing.
If you think the quotes above are bad, just wait until Apple really starts eating into the Wintel market and Microsoft shareholders, media companies that depend on Microsoft, antivirus software companies, Windows-only software makers, “computer help” gurus in the media (radio, TV, magazines) who live off Windows’ mediocrity, and others begin to defend their turf. It’s going to get very, very ugly.
For our Windows-only friends who are not trapped under the thumbs of dictatorial IT morons suffering from severe cases of Stockholm Syndrome, information about smoothly adding a safe, secure, powerful, and fun Mac OS X machine to your computing arsenal can be found here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Windows Media songs and videos found to carry Windows malware payloads – December 30, 2004
Anzae/Inzae worm affects all Windows versions after 3.1; Macintosh unaffected – December 28, 2004
Unlike Windows users, Mac OS X users surf the Internet without a care in the world – December 28, 2004
Multiple unpatched Windows holes crop up; Windows systems compromised within minutes in experiment – December 24, 2004
Windows spyware mess is out of control, get a Mac and surf with impunity – December 21, 2004
New Microsoft Internet Explorer exploit spoofs Web sites on fully patched Windows XP systems – December 17, 2004
Microsoft may charge extra for Windows spyware protection software – December 16, 2004
Detroit Free Press: Windows malware problem getting worse, it’s time to get a Mac instead – December 16, 2004
Sick of spyware, adware headaches? Get a Mac and surf the Internet freely – December 13, 2004
Mossberg: Windows PCs plagued with problems, Apple’s Mac is ‘rock solid, elegant and affordable’ – December 09, 2004
Security expert: Don’t use Microsoft Windows, Office, Outlook, Internet Explorer – December 09, 2004
Security test: Windows XP system easily compromised while Apple’s Mac OS X stands safe and secure – November 30, 2004
Sick of spyware, adware infecting your PC? Don’t fret, just get a Mac – November 01, 2004
Microsoft: The safest way to run Windows is on your Mac – October 08, 2004
Spyware plagues Windows users while Mac users surf Net with impunity – November 01, 2004
Ballmer blames Windows users for not upgrading systems as Microsoft’s biggest security problem – October 22, 2004
Windows users line up to pay for spyware removal; Mac users surf Web with impunity – October 18, 2004
Microsoft: The safest way to run Windows is on your Mac – October 08, 2004
Windows users’ security woes spark interest in Apple’s secure Mac OS X – October 06, 2004
Windows desktop monopoly threatened by secure, safe Apple Mac OS X – October 04, 2004
Even Bill Gates can’t avoid Windows malware; Mac users surf the Web freely – October 03, 2004
Cyber-security adviser uses Apple Macintosh to avoid Windows’ security woes – September 27, 2004
Information Security Investigator says switch from Windows to Mac OS X for security – September 24, 2004
Mossberg: Apple iMac G5 ‘powerful, affordable, virus-free with better, more modern OS than Windows XP’ – September 23, 2004
USA Today: people are switching from Windows to Mac because of security issues – September 21, 2004
Windows besieged by hackers; number of Windows viruses soars by more than 400% – September 20, 2004
USA Today columinst angry about Windows viruses, adware, spyware – September 15, 2004
University of Chicago recommends all students patch Windows at least once a day – September 14, 2004
Windows XP worm speaks to users as it deletes their files; Macintosh unaffected – September 13, 2004
Security is top priority in Apple’s Mac OS X – September 12, 2004
Millions of Windows PC’s hijacked by hackers, turned into zombies; Macintosh unaffected – September 08, 2004
Mossberg: Dump your Windows machine and get an Apple Macintosh to free yourself of spyware – August 25, 2004
Tired of patching patches to patch Windows patches? Writer suggests getting a Mac – August 03, 2004
Windows ‘Scob’ virus designed to steal financial data, passwords; Macintosh unaffected – June 26, 2004
Gartner: Worms jack up the total cost of Microsoft Windows – May 07, 2004
Spyware, adware plague Windows users online; Mac OS X users surf freely – April 19, 2004
SmartMoney: Long-suffering Windows users can only dare to dream of Mac’s ease-of-use – February 12, 2004
Mac OS X has no viruses; what’s wrong with Windows? – February 11, 2004
Gates: Windows ‘by far the most secure’ system; tries to use ‘Mac OS X secure through obscurity’ myth – January 27, 2004
Columnist tries the ‘security through obscurity’ myth to defend Windows vs. Macs on virus front – October 1, 2003
New York Times: Mac OS X ‘much more secure than Windows XP’ – September 18, 2003
Wall Street Journal’s Mossberg on making the switch from Windows to Mac – September 18, 2003
Fortune columnist: ‘get a Mac’ to thwart viruses; right answer for the wrong reasons – September 02, 2003
Shattering the Mac OS X ‘security through obscurity’ myth – August 28, 2003
Is Mac OS X really inherently more secure than Windows? – August 26, 2003
Chicago Sun-Times columnist: Windows ‘many holes in its security’ but ‘none of my Macs have ever been affected – August 26, 2003
Sick of worms and viruses? ‘Move to Mac OS X’ suggests Chicago Tribune columnist – August 25, 2003
Virus and worm problems not just due to market share; Windows inherently insecure vs. Mac OS X – August 24, 2003
I work at a huge company. Operations all over the world and very wealthy, yet even with all of these resources, our computers are shoddy at best (at least the ones I have seen, the IT guys and upper management might have really nice stuff).
We always have problems, they are slow, they lock up and it is just generally hard to get much done on them.
When I call our computer help desk, they admit that IT will never will never move to Apple because it would mean the end of the road for so many of them.
Of course, I’ve also had to explain how blue-tooth anad flash memory works to these people, so I have no faith in their technological judgement.
~M
Our IT dept is actually fairly buisy working on developing web and print based solutions for the company. Our head admin deals with occasional print or font issues on the Macs, file management and security as well as any other day to day dealings that a print/design/communications company would have. We have a couple of Java developers for our web stuff who use PCs and the head of the IT dept who oversees the back end development (MS) of most of that.
Well that is a rough over view anyway. We have a good firewall/anitvirus set up and I havent really been aware of any of the PCs at work being hit by viruses.
Right. All these IT guys are wrong.
Macdaileynews is acting like idiots. Defensive, instinctively critical, arrogant about Mac. Immature.
Fine then. Keep being mindless pumpers. It does a disservice to readers.
Our little company is all OSx now…15 Apple computers just chugging away every day. The operating system and the hardware is about as reliable as a hammer – which is pretty reliable.
Our last Dell Windows piece of garbage sits in a closet just in case we need it for something, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.
In a few weeks it will be three years since our first iMac with OSx arrived…. That’s 3 years with zero viruses, zero downtime and not one blue screen of death or emergency reboot.
Mac & OSx – Stable, secure, reliable – it just works.
Thank you Apple
What Apple needs to do is get a big marquee account to switch to Macs and then publicize the hell out of the savings in IT that they will post. They should select a target that is well known and then go after it very aggressively with low or even zero (negative even maybe?) profit. They would have to make sure that the hardware pricing/savings was not figured in; just the IT and maintenance costs. This would be a long term project though as the business would only be able to begin reducing IT staff over a long period (a few years maybe). Wasn’t Fedex rumored to be thinking of going Mac? They would serve very nicely for something like this.
I think that the best way to attack the target account would be through the bean counters. They don’t care about which operating system is used, only how many beans they got to count. Apple needs to get some bean counters of their own in (rather than salesmen) to explain it to them though. Get a really good salesman to get them in the door and then let the bean counters get together.
Once this marquee account made the major press, a lot of CEOs would be asking their IT Managers why they don’t consider phasing in Macs too. Any time you can cut a dollar off costs, that is a dollar that goes directly to your bottom line. You just need a prominent case study to prove that significant cost savings is what actually occurs over the long run with Macs.
I liked NoPCZones idea for endowing a few chairs at major universities too but that is a long term project also. Apple should be looking into things like this though.
[I]Gavin Whatrup, IT director at advertising agency Delaney Lund Knox Warren & Partners, said that while Apple’s strengths are in ‘great technology,’ graphics and design, the company needs to address supply, price and integration issues to break into the corporate mainstream.[/I]
Gavin is the only guy here who makes much sense. However, Mac mini kills off his price argument and anyone who does a like-for-like licensing study comparing OS X to Windows Server would soon realise that the savings aren’t quite what you think. As for integration, it would be nicer if Apple worked more seamlessly in an Active Directory environment and if Safari would operate with Microsuck’s ISA Server – but then again, it would also be nicer if Microsoft didn’t behave in an abusive manner.
Maybe people need to be a little bit more broad-minded and consider why integration is important. Normally it’s simply Exchange integration that is the biggest problem and the desire for a similar level of functionality – but why not go and look at Kerio’s mail server product.
[I]Richard Steel, head of ICT, Newham Borough Council, was more succinct. ‘[Apple is] still an expensive fashion accessory in the consumer market and niche for business,'[/I]
Well, Dick by name, dick by nature.
Richard obviously knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing (I do like a bit of Wilde at this time in the evening). And it’s obviously more valuable to Dick to keep his little empire with his massive budget.
Windows is a fantastic product for all public service use: unless you run a mission-critical system, or an air traffic control operation, or a social security entitlement system (ask the UK’s Department of Work and Pensions’s personnel how they feel about Microsoft’s SMS after last years fabulous SP2 pilot debacle that took out 70% of DWP desktops – also ask them how they feel about well-known ‘IT professionals’ EDS).
The only way Apple will advance into the enterprise market is if they do the following…
1) Get an MS Exchange/Novell Groupwise alternative. Or at least get Mail.app and iCal.app to work with them.
2) Do what IBM does, go to companies and offer them a “solution” package. Why else did IBM buy PWC? IBM goes to companies and tells them why they need IBM and how IBM can save them money.
Apple supposedly is interested in having an Enterprise division. What are they doing?
IT directors and IT Managers are the most clueless bunch of morons you will ever meet.
This matches my experience. I’ve casually used PCs over the last ten years, and I’ve found that I know more about more things PC than most of the IT guys and gals I encounter. They seem to have very specialized knowledge in very limited areas and that’s it.
[I]”A couple of IT bosses, including Ted Woodhouse, IT director at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said the only reason there are few malware exploits for Apple software is down to a lack of market penetration.”[/I]
Truly cretinous! It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that MS is staffed by monkeys who don’t have rigorous quality control applied to their work. Windows 2000 Server shipped with over 100,000 “issues” acknowledged by Microsoft – so isn’t it reasonable to assume that some of these issues have manifested themselves as security weaknesses.
And the worrying thing is that these people are typical of the types who get given honours by the Government.
And not many have mentioned the licensing savings. I’m not too into shopping large IT software licenses but everything I’ve heard tends to point toward great savings with MacOS Server. It’s going to be slow going, but I think Apple can make some good inroads over the next 5 years.
The thing is, these people do have a few points to make. Office PCs only have to be cheap, integrated graphics affairs. Until two weeks ago, Apple had nothing to compete in that space, and even now, the Mac mini is more aimed at home users than anything else. Apple also have frequent supply problems. IT Directors know that with Windows, they can tell Dell to sod off and go to HP if Dell can’t deliver. With Mac OS they get one supplier to choose from.
This is a huge point.
Hate to say it, but Apple tries to control too much of the ‘apple’ pie at times. Sometimes people here confuse windows with hardware. the Win OS is ubiquitous, but the hardware can be bought from any variety of sources.
With Macs, you’re locked into both hardware and software.
Apple OS X will not make signifigant inroads into the IT community until it can run on multiple platforms.
It’s never a good idea to be locked into one supplier, no matter HOW good their stuff is. That’s common business sense.
IT also isn’t all about fixing problems. A good IT team also has a business solutions team who built programs/solutions for employees. Most things are going to open-standards, web-based programming.
‘IT’ is not solely “the helpdesk”
and winmacguy… excellent post. Many people here have too much “zealotry” to see past their own bias.
Here’s the unvarnished truth: sys admins will be the first to tell you that, as a whole, their bosses, the CIO’s, are clueless about technology. In corporations, especially large ones, senior executives are typically far more concerned about their spheres of influence than actually running the company, and they will fight to the death to defend their budgets, and hence their power, against any cuts. In the case of information officers, introducing Mac networks would probably allow administrative staff cuts, and their budgets would shrink accordingly. They are tech-savvy enough to understand that disruptive technologies could undermine their power. Thus there are many layers of resistance, from the administrative staff concerned about job security, to the high-level officers concerned about status. Apple has a huge mountain to climb. They will make inroads only if customers can demonstrate that they enjoy a significant advantage over their competitors by installing Apple gear.
“It’s never a good idea to be locked into one supplier, no matter HOW good their stuff is. That’s common business sense.”
iSteve,
This is an excellent point, and one which Mac lovers often overlook. Monoculture is a very dangerous thing, from hardware, software, and business points of view, and it is much, much better to run a heterogenous system than only one. True, there may be more vulnerabilities with more than one system in place, but it’s incumbent on the CIO to choose systems whose vulnerabilities do not coincide. What may bring down any one shouldn’t be able to bring down the others. An example would be a network running a mixture of Linux, BSD, OS X or Windows in any combination, on multiple hardware architectures. Sure, Windows has a terrible reputation when it comes to security, but knowledgeable administrators can lock it down tight.
Microsoft’s dominance (and licensing fees) may well shrink as a philosophy that promulgates heterogenous systems gains acceptance, but only a fool would predict their downfall.
Isteve
You talk crap as usual!
winmacguy you wrote:
Our head admin at work told me recently there are only two things keeping Apple out of the enterprise.
1 No file auditing capabilities for administrators i.e tracking who has had access to what files and when.
2 Administrators passwords remain active and can’t be deleted. In NT they only remain active for 30 days. Therefore Win NT actually has better adminsecurity than OSX believe it or not.
The company I work for has large OSX server/print server set up as well as running windows machines.
All the other points mentioned inthe article were a load of ****!
Being an admin of OS X server and Windows NT, I have to agree with you on point 1. But on point 2, if you refer to this document you can see that OS X server is pretty flexible and easy to modify admin and client passwords. What I do like about NT is how much easier it is to define shared drives/folders (share points) than in OS X server. Also, when running OS X Server, if you are adding Oracle or any other DB server out there, you’d better be very comfortable and confident using the terminal. Since I was brought up in UNIX, that doesn’t bother me. I do notice a lot of these “new school” cats are too used to wizards and such. Overall, OS X server and NT are both very capable. However, when it comes to overall polish and ease of use, I prefer the Apple. Plus, if you have Macs as the client machines, I find that it is easier to control what a user can do on that machine without circumventing your safeguards and I also notice that I get more development work done when the staff uses the Mac as opposed to a Windows-based machine.
Apple can be successful and ‘relevant’ to business, it’s just that a lot of people refuse to be educated beyond their little MS certifications.
Disappointed with the IT guys.
Disappointed with MDN’s response.
Apple DO have supply problems. The hardware is more proprietary, in that if Apple can’t deliver, then that’s the end of that.
But do Apple have much interest in getting onto corporate desktops ? There’s not much evidence of that. There’s evidence of wanting to get into the server side, where (if these idiots would care to look), they have some great products at great prices.
There are TOC elements to consider, like licenses. Like rack space. A 1U rackmount at £3000 might actually pay for itself in a year compared to a 3U rackmount at £1000. Just in the space it takes up in the building. (I’ve made up the numbers, I know they’re not accurate).
What companies are interested in Apple right now ?
Oracle is one.
Cisco is another.
Neither of them are looking at desktops. A Mac is just as capable of running Office in an office as a PC is.
the problem with prorietary products is not onApple’s side, it’s on the business’s side. The problem is all that software that they have that runs on top of windows that they would have to port over if they needed to switch.
What they need to do is make a decision to be less reliant on M$ and more reliant on standards. That means writing portable applications (in Java, for example). Thin clients with standards comliant browser based interfaces. In a few years time, they’ll find that they are able to switch very easily to Linux, OS-X, Sun, or a mixture.
Currently where I work, I’m not only tied to XP, I’m also tied to IE for some tasks (though I use firefox for anything else). That’s not good.
On being locked in – with windows you are locked in, locked in on the ready critical part of the system – the extended operating system.
http://macenterprise.org/
You wanna talk about how IT people can be clueless especially in the City Government sector. I was in a meeting about getting an application done for the city and asked if we can get PHP installed on the Windows server for the particular department I was speaking for (the city uses 99% Windows enviroment). The IT guy looks at me…..like I am from Mars. He says to me, “What’s PHP?”. I was thinking in my head: “OH MY GAWD! You have got to be kidding me?” I said it’s like ASP only better.
After that meeting….I got a taste of what the city was like and how they think. Come to find out the IT Director was a former Microsoft employee. Go figure.
“It’s never a good idea to be locked into one supplier, no matter HOW good their stuff is. That’s common business sense.”
SOOOOO thats why its OK to run MS Windows, MS Internet Explorer, MS IIS Server, MS BackOffice, MS SQL, MS Exchange, and etc??
Maybe the comment should read “It’s never a good idea to be locked into one supplier, no matter HOW good their stuff is. That’s common business sense. But how bad it is, thats another job security story altogether.”
It really doesn’t matter if the box is plain white, generic beige, or has some manufactures brand label (Dell, Gateway, Compaq, HP, or etc) its ALL wintel inside, but I guess that doesn’t count as one single locked in supplier.
Sure, flame away about how the hardware itself is available from multiple vendors. thats fine, but where does the real root of the problem come from? The OS that they are locked into. The security disaster called windows.
They can lie about Apple products costing more (not true, especially Xserve) not being compatible, not being good network citizens, not having common application available, but please, don’t give us the sad tired “we don’t want to be locked into a single vendor” song and dance. They already are, and have no desire to be free of it. Company resources, productivity, up and running time be damned, give us windows.
I am in IT, and for a few years I was happy that MS support gave me a paycheck so I could go home to my mac at night. Then one day something snapped. enough banging my head against the wall, it just wasn’t worth it. I found a tech opening dealing with Macs, and have never looked back.
solarfare, you are a clueless moron!
Pull your head out of Jobs’s ass!
MCCFR is right on the money about the credibility of British local councils’ IT managers–this is almost like having a jury of junior-high-school football coaches weigh in on corporate IT! Sort of cute and sad at the same time. I can almost see their pudgy faces, and hear their voices.
Apple’s presence in western Europe is also less than its presence in the U.S., so to some extent the complacent ignorance of these “jurymen” about what the platform offers probably reflects that.
The British site Silicon.com has a great domain name, but not a whole lot going on in terms of editorial quality. I would listen to Infoworld instead–the original hard-core IT managers’ magazine, and one that flatly refused to do anything more than snicker about Macs through the 1990s and early 21st century but which has now, for the past two years, absolutely been leading the way towards thinking about Apple as a corporate IT platform, with nothing but praise for pretty nearly all their offerings.
(Ephraim Schwartz is Infoworld’s remaining semi-naysayer, but it seems to be pretty much down to the level of religion for him–his reasons for writing pieces giving him a chance to Reluctantly Conclude That Apple Has No Place In A Serious Organization are noticeably pretty thin these days.)
Anyway, as Tom Yager, director of Infoworld’s test labs, put it some 18 months ago: “Companies large and small routinely set their expectations of computer systems according to the capabilities of Intel-based x86 computers and 32-bit Windows. We’re due for a shift in standards. . . . the Power Mac G5 shatters the long-standing limits of expectation imposed by Intel and Microsoft. . . . Maybe customers aren’t as dull, as timid, or as easily led as other vendors believe.”
Yager also regularly calls the G5 the best and most powerful desktop computer sold, the Xserve G5 the best server solution sold (and one of the cheapest), Xserve RAID the best (and absolutely the cheapest) mass-storage solution sold, Mac OS X far superior to any available flavor of Linux or Windows . . . the list goes on, and on, and on. And, basically, he should know!
So I’m not sure whose irrelevance is really shown by this survey. To the extent that it shows that British local councils’ IT departments don’t get out much or even read very much in the IT press, I guess that’s bad news for Apple–but on the whole, it’s really worse news for the people who work at those councils.
Loved this comment:
Answer: “Irrelevant.”
Question: What did the brontosaurus think upon seeing the first mammal scurrying among the leaves?
I work in a v large corporation ($6bn/year profit) and IT is just awful. All PC based of course, but they just don’t have a clue about how what they do feeds into the requirements of the business. As an example, we’re supposed to have a quota of 120MB personal drive space, and are expected to spend time deleting unwanting files and making sure that we don’t exceed this limit. Sounds reasonably sensible until you realise that 120MB of disk space costs about 5p – even 10 minutes of my time is going to cost orders of magnitude more than that.
The stupid thing is that I really don’t think that (good) IT people have to worry about losing their jobs if they don’t have to spend all their time simply keeping the machines free from viruses and other malware. There are so many areas in which IT could be better applied to help the business achieve its aims and objectives but these are largely left to people outside the IT department but who have an interest and knowledge of IT to investigate and progress as part of their normal jobs. If the IT people spent less time writing two-pagers and bean counting, and instead worked on understanding the business and how IT could impact it then everyone would be better off.
And as a final comment – Ashford borough council IT Director?! That’s what you might call being at the wide part of the CIO pyramid…
Duh, you know they’re going to say that. Apple solutions are Job security killers since you don’t need an over abundance of IT professionals to maintain business PCs.
Remember that an Australian university said that they had 3 IT people maintaining their 800 Macs, while 15 other IT folks were maintaining 1200 Windows PCs. The head count per IT person was ridiculous on the Windows side.
At the end of the day, it’s the ill-perceived mindset of what an IT infrastructure should be built around dating back to its creation of the ’80s.
Morons!
“SOOOOO thats why its OK to run MS Windows, MS Internet Explorer, MS IIS Server, MS BackOffice, MS SQL, MS Exchange, and etc??”
Darknite,
iSteve’s comment about lock-in is still relevant; please don’t put words in his mouth. At no time did he say that it was OK to run MS end-to-end. It is not. In fact, it is the Windows monoculture that has prompted recent discussions on the dangers of lock-in. Not only is it a very bad idea because of Microsoft’s terrible security record but, by introducing other solutions, companies can get some leverage against them when it comes to their gun-to-the-head licensing fees. Threatening them with Linux or BSD or OS X can wring concessions from them.