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.
Gartner will get it someday.
Come on MDN, stop holding back and tell us how you really feel.
FTA:
“… 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.”
Yes and the ability to recruit the top students, now choosing Macs in the colleges, will be severely hamstrung by Windows using would be employers.
Gartner: home of Mark Stahlman. He used to be one the the head honchos at Caris & Co who in Spring said Mac sales would never rise, Boot Camp was literally going to drive away OS X users from the Mac and into the Windows camp, that Apple were crazy to go Intel instead of AMD, and that the platform was doomed.
He also said GOOG was going to hit $2000.
He also said oil was going to hit $100.
He said iTunes was going to be wiped out by a mythical new Google Music service that mysteriously never appeared.
He also famously said: “a phone venture would be a “distraction” for Apple. “It’s so different from what they’ve done to date.”
He also said Vista would never run on Intel Macs because Tiger isn’t a 64-bit OS.
Finally, at his new home – Gartner Research – he co-authored the report a few months ago saying Apple should get out of the hardware business and sell OS X to DELL.
The guy’s a farce. So is Gartner for employing him.
This pisses me off from a another perspective as well. It basically puts the only two real alternatives to Windows at odds with each other [Linux, OS X] – apparently. What a load of crap. The only actual competition Linux and OS X have is Windows – only Windows.
I dream of a day when there will several companies all competing, equitably, with each other, but we’re not there yet.
A friend of mine is order a new iMac for her work computer — they are completely windows based so she will be running it as a windows computer but at least it is a start. The price is competative for the specs and the lack of a tower will give her more freedom in her desk layout. And yes, I convinced her to buy a MacBook earlier this year for her personal computer.
I already told Apple Computer is proof that enterprises can run their business on a Mac. Touche.
Bzzkit,
A wonderful and witty understatement. The best post on MDN this year!
The company I work for would never switch from Doze to OSX. We use XP, but are still using MS-DOS software for our data base, although we are now trying to move to an XP solution.
I recently had a problem with Outlook and IT attempted to fix it by Googling (!) the web for a solution. That’s the sorry state Doze has fallen to, or maybe always was.
The solution is staring them in the face, but we’ll probably go to Vista by, oh, maybe 2009. We’re only state-wide. How hard could a switch to OS X be for us?
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.
You really need to get out more. Sometimes it’s a choice between spending 150,000+ on systems that someone else built and programmed or hiring your own programmer and building your own system for much, much more. And it isn’t MS software that people get shackled to, it’s highly specialized vertical apps that run on some flavor of Windows. If all you’ve got is AutoCAD as your cliche example then your lack of imagination only reveals your naivete.
People choose to ingore the fact that Apple performs all its business operations on Macs and has done reasonably well. Most people are apparently content with PC’s capable of running Windows exclusively.
effwerd,
You’ve missed the point. MDN is taking a little sideswipe at AutoCAD as one example of a “15-year-old custom spaghetti-coded Windows-only abomination.” Your ” highly specialized vertical apps” are the same as AutoCAD: Windows-only. That’s MDN’s point.
As MDN states, that’s Windows’ only selling point. Now that Macs can run Windows AND Mac OS X (AND Linux, if you care) natively, it’s sheer stupidity to buy anything other than an Apple Mac.
Slowly, but surely, I am replacing my company’s PCs with Macs running both Windows and Mac OS X. I know of others in my field who are waking up and doing the same, too.
Not only that, most of these folks you bash aren’t even high enough on the ladder to forge their own way in purchasing. They can shop and suggest but they ultimately acquiesce to higher ups. And CEOs, COOs and CFOs just don’t like to replace productive systems with new, untested systems just because they require some extra maintenance and are difficult to run by the cogs making $20 an hour. Besides, most of these systems were probably bought before anyone who works with them now even arrived on the scene.
And if you think 15 years is a suitable life for some of these systems, well that’s just dumb. Most of these specialized systems have their cost amortized for probably twice that amount of time.
Enlightened IT Manager, following are some of the systems I’m talking about:
CD/DVD manufacturing and testing
Woodcutting and painting automation
Food processing, mixing, extrusion and packaging
Small automotive component machining, manufacture and testing
Supply chain management, tracking, and customer interaction systems
General packaging systems
Inventory DB and controls
Nothing like AutoCAD at all. And bosses would chuckle and walk away if you suggest, “We should just get Macs.”
It seems to me that platform agnostic is they key to all this. As the web is at the centre of our universe the fewer the Windows specific apps?
This landscape will look very different in 5 years time, because OS X is simply too good to be ignored by enterprise for much longer.
effwerd,
You get Macs and run those apps on Windows on the Mac, but you also have the ability to migrate to Mac OS X. With PCs, you’re stuck in the same old self-defeating pattern.
I run many of the functions you’ve listed above on Apple Macs running both Windows and Mac OS X.
My bosses didn’t chuckle and walk away when I explained why we should get Macs, they bought them.
The worst thing is for companies like myself who are reliant on other software providers who in turn have shackled themselves to Microsoft. I’m an insurance broker and our business is based upon being provided rates by insurance companies – we have to use them. They provide those rates via software companies who without exception in our industry are Microsoft whores. One company has just been touting their new product (yet another) and one of the advantages of it is proudly listed as being Vista compliant. Whoopdi fscking doo. I wish I could go fully Mac but will make do once Boot camp is final and I can use it in conjunction with parallels.
Just wait til Leopard allows you to run ALL Windows applications natively in OS X.
Leopard GUI, menubar at the top of the screen.
MXNT41, effwerd, and Enlightened IT Manager,
You are all saying the same thing! Some industries could switch to the Macintosh platform without difficulty if they wanted to. However, there are other industries that rely on Winblows-only software. For those companies, the dual boot solution provided by Boot Camp is either not considered or is too “experimental” for their tastes. Either way, it will only be a matter of time before they see that TCO more strongly favors the Macintosh platform. Apple’s strategy is a smart one – don’t take on enterprise head-on. Instead, pick at them from the edges – the home user, education, scientific users, and high-end workstations. Enterprise will slowly come around in due time.
I used to work for Gartner in their Application Development area and I can say from seeing their systems that the problem they have with moving to Mac isn’t the TCO on the hardware. In fact I have heard many an executive at Gartner agree that Mac’s have a lower TCO than Windows based machines. The problem lies in the legacy systems that MDN pointed out. Many of these systems though antiquated are relied upon so heavily and manpower is so short that redeveloping them to work across multi-platforms becomes a daunting task that requires the business to justify the cost and potential downtime associated with it. In the end the mentality becomes more of a “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke” one rather than a “we need to be at the forefront of our industry.” This is quite a sore point at Gartner since they are an IT research company touting the newest trends, yet they are unwilling to push the envelope within their own walls.
*I want to point out that the statements about Gartner as a company are blanket statements and do not reflect the thinking of the individuals; this includes the CEO who is making a concerted effort to change the way Gartner works and has helped integrate Macs into certain areas of the company.
I also love my Mac’s and when I worked there I stopped using my IBM thinkbrick and brought in my powerbook.
TwentyBenson,
Not happening. The best you can hope for is fast user switching between OS X and XP/Vista. Otherwise, it will be dual-boot as Phil Schiller said.
You get Macs and run those apps on Windows on the Mac,
Wait, so you’re still running Windows only on the Mac and you’ve broken what self-defeating pattern? Buying PCs? Sorry, that doesn’t work with most bean counters. I priced a Mac server for my department and it came out to about 10,000. My IT guy came back with a quote for a self-built system for 2,500. Sure, it’s not as decked out, and there’s the IT guy’s salary but they aren’t going to get rid of him so that’s not really an added cost, per se.
but you also have the ability to migrate to Mac OS X
The ability to hire a Mac programmer, when they already have Windows programmers who know nothing of the Mac or Objective-C.
I run many of the functions you’ve listed above on Apple Macs running both Windows and Mac OS X.
Sure those last three are pretty generic and have a good chance of having their front ends replaced. And if you’re lucky enough to be in a corporate environment with enlightened bosses who know what good business decision making is all about, wonderful, but not everyone is so lucky. The corporate culture, in general, just doesn’t breed that kind of person (enlightened with a good business sense). But for the most part, most bosses would have to be stupid and reckless to just abandon systems that they already have in place and are productive and profitable and have low maintenance costs (not all Windows systems are problematic).
My main dispute with MDN’s insulting and self-congratulatory attitude is that it’s the same as abstinence only sex ed or the drug war: If only everyone just did the sensible thing, there wouldn’t be any problem. That’s just not a solution, it’s Pollyanna idealism.
Yeah, MDN talks like you just order them and put them in. Hahah. What a joke. It’s really easy to sit in your bedroom and talk big smack MDN. Get out there in the IT community and your mind will change quickly. I personally believe in mixed environments, but one’s that are productive and allow users to get their jobs done. OS X has really just started coming into it’s own over the last 2 years. I really only started reccomending macs to people after Panther. You talk like Mac has been a mature and robust system for quite a bit longer than it really has. I’ve been using OS X since 10.03. I was a dummy way too early adopter. What will really help get the Mac OS into the enterprise is a hardcore win32 API set that runs on top of OS X. That way we can move our accounting, trafic/billing and automation systems over to the Mac OS. It’s not magic MDN. I would love to fill my office and radio stations with Macs. I have about 7 in here now. but ther rest of the other 50 machines and two servers are Windows 2k3.
You ever hear of the naikwa runtime environment? That little ditty began it’s life on Wang computers while I was shitting in my diapers. It was then ported to DOS. Is that a good example of short sighted? I’m 33 today. This runtime moved thrpough Windows and is supporting this software as we speak. It would be nice to see this company port it again over to *nix of any flavor and then it can be compiled for OS X server and I’d be set. Money talks, so when the time is right and Apple makes all the right moves including getting serious about selling to enterprise and enterprise support it will happen. Currently it doesn’t appear that they are interested in persuing the corporation. I guess you can preach to me about it and set me straight. Find me a traffic and billing package that runs on OS X and I’ll look at it (with excitement) and evaluate it fairly. Then I will make the case to blow thousands of dollars porting our data and buying new hardware to run it…..then they’ll say no. Then I’ll wait and eventually I’ll get to do it. This stuff takes time. Stop talking shit about IT departments. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
I gotta chime in here. I’m a huge Mac fan and have been since 1984. I’ve built businesses around the Mac and Mac OS X. BUT, there always was and still remains a SERIOUS lack of serious CRM, Intranet, Sales and Financial software management software for the Mac environment. You simply cannot run a company greater than say 100 people ENTIRELY on the Mac. I got pretty close. We made it to say 50 people but at that point your accounting system will strain and your sales guys will beg for sales forecasting tools. HR will need EASY intranet tools. The list goes on and on.
I have GREAT hope for Leopard Server. I think Apple realizes that their Calendar, though beautiful, is useless for a workgroup. The inclusion of a Wiki will do wonders for building and managing an intranet. It’s not up to Apple to develop first class Sales, CRM & Financial applications but hopefully with more Mac Servers out there there will be more demand for the big guns to migrate their apps to the Mac. And yes, maybe even AutoCAD (Though I’d argue that VectorWorks is, and always has been, a MUCH better drafting app).
For those companies, the dual boot solution provided by Boot Camp is either not considered or is too “experimental” for their tastes.
That is how I see it, too, Cubert but…
Either way, it will only be a matter of time before they see that TCO more strongly favors the Macintosh platform.
I just don’t know about that. We have, on my side of the factory, about 4 dozen PCs running NT4 and aren’t connected to the net. About a half dozen of them are integrated right into the machinery they drive. They just don’t have many problems at all. They get maintenanced about once a year.There won’t ever be a time when replacing them with Macs would make any sense at all.
effwerd,
Are you being obtuse just to be obtuse?
Maybe I’m not being clear.
– I am replacing a mix of PC boxes, laptops, and servers with Apple Macs.
– We are running the Windows-only apps we’re stuck with for the time being via Parallels Desktop for Mac (and Boot Camp in some cases) with Windows XP.
– I am using Mac OS X apps where possible instead of Windows- only apps. For example, on the Macs, we use Safari and/or Firefox instead of IE. We use Mac OS X Mail instead of Outlook. We use iChat AV to communicate in real time.
– We use Keynote instead of PowerPoint.
– We will not buy or use Windows-only apps going forward.
– Basically, we install the Macs and use Windows as little as possible until we no longer need Windows. It’s working.