“Mac skills have long been seen as superfluous for IT professionals; Apple platforms are rarely used in medium and large enterprises, and not even the release of the OS X operating system chipped away at Windows’ claim on the IT department. Yet some observers feel that this is set to change,” Deb Perelman reports for eWeek.
“Between October 2007 and January 2008, two dozen researchers at IBM participated in an internal pilot program designed to investigate the possibility of migrating employees to the Mac platform. At the end of the trial, 86 percent of the testers asked to continue using their Macs, leading IBM to plan to expand the pilot to 100 users by the end of 2008,” Perelman reports.
“‘I have been a true PC stalwart for two-plus decades, but after trying Vista, I’m ready for a change,’ commented one pilot program participant,” Perelman reports.
“But who will support this change? A common conception is that the IT department will not embrace Macs willingly,” Perelman reports. “‘There is almost a religious belief by existing IT staff in the Windows religion, and it’s a symbiotic relationship: They keep getting Microsoft certifications and they keep telling their bosses to continue buying Windows,’ Technology Business Research analyst Ezra Gottheil told eWEEK.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jim H.” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: It’s not a “religious belief,” it’s a mental illness; a combination of Stockholm Syndrome and Cognitive Dissonance, to be precise. Inflict enough pain on someone and you can reduce them to sniveling sycophants in no time. It’s the Microsoft Way™. More on that here: Defending Windows over Mac a sign of mental illness.
As for IT’s willingness: CEOs, who runs the company, you or the IT guy? It’s your job to make the decisions and it’s the IT guy’s job to implement your decisions that relate to technology. You need to educate yourself instead of relying on someone with their own, possibly hidden, agendas to make extremely important technology decisions for your company. Most of you could be saving a lot of money right now, but you aren’t, because you’ve delegated an important and expensive portion of your company’s decision-making process to people who, frankly, in our experience, aren’t capable of making good, sound, strategic, long-term decisions. Most IT guys (and we know many) are not open-minded enough to be able to consider new, better, more efficient, more effective options that would benefit your company. In fact, most IT guys we’ve met will throw up road blocks and repeat myths until they’re blue in the face simply in order to avoid change. Especially change that might make their department less critical and smaller. Bottom line: most of you CEOs have given the IT guy way too much power. It’s time to take it back.