“Now that reports show the Mac gaining market share, reporters and analysts alike are wondering when Apple CEO Steve Jobs will go after the corporate market,” Tim Beyers writes for The Motley Fool.
“Apple can, and I believe will, win in the boardroom. It merely needs an insurrection — an uprising that pulls its consumer technology into the enterprise market,” Beyers writes.
“We know such radical shifts are possible. Consider Research In Motion’s BlackBerry. From 1999 to 2004, it was mostly a cool gadget that users brought to work. IT managers dealt with the intrusion, and since that time, RIM’s subscriber base has grown from 2 million to more than 14 million,” Beyers writes. “Or think of Firefox. Devoted consumers have downloaded the browser by the millions in a rebellion against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The result? Big firms such as IBM have told their IT teams to figure out how to accommodate the upstart.”
“So with history as our guide, it follows that if Apple really wants to win the corporate market, it needs to keep winning consumers. And those consumers, in turn, have to sway IT managers to make room for their gear. Gear like, you know, the iPhone,” Beyers writes.
“Here’s the good news for investors: Jobs already knows the pattern, and he’s arming consumers to take the fight to their IT departments,” Beyers writes.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Bill C.” for the heads up.]
We agree. iPhone 2.0 will push Macs into the enterprise; in fact, the awakening has already begun with iPhone 1.0. We believe Macs will continue to infiltrate and liberate businesses at an ever-increasing rate for the foreseeable future. And, with the number of people having Macs at home also increasing, the demand for Macs at work will be coming from more and more frustrated employees demanding change. Likewise, as more and more Mac show up at work, those with Dells, HP, etc. at home will see what they are missing and switch to Mac. And so, the whole thing snowballs because, as we all know, “Once You Go Mac, You Never Go Back.”
MacDailyNews Note: By the way, Apple Inc. is a very large company, with approximately 21,600 full-time employees plus an additional 2,100 temporary employees located in offices all around the world, and they all use Macs. Macs can not only exist in business, but they can run large businesses. Here are a couple of other examples: Japan’s Aozora Bank dumps 2,300 Windows PCs for Apple Macs – April 03, 2006, Largest automobile processing company in North America dumps Windows PCs for Apple Macs – July 16, 2007
In addition: Apple needs to wedge itself into the IT education departments of all major and minor colleges, universities, and trade schools. In other words, stop cranking out Windows only IT pros by the hordes.
@Mr. Peabody
Your absolutely right about fighting the battle for Apple with no compensation at all. I’ve spend countless hours, perhaps days, with reports after reports, articles after articles, testimonies after testimonies with IT. Double that when I come up against SOX with companies. People have no idea how hard it is to bat for Apple when it comes to that environment.
I showed this page to the IT guys where I work and when they were done laughing they said “Bring the MAC dorks on!”
All relevant data shows Microsoft-based solutions have the lowest introductory and administrative costs in the enterprise. We aren’t seeing a paradigm shift here. The IT guys said no shop worth their salt would ever institute overpriced, proprietary MACs. Besides, they estimated that the productivity losses alone make it impossible to justify namby pamby MACs that can’t cut the mustard. How do you view or forward the e-mail with the .WMV of the monkey drinking his own pee from the guy in marketing on a MAC? You can’t.
Your potential. Our passion.™
After having 6 months off work and using only my 2 Macs, it has been EXCRUCIATINGLY painful to go back to Winblows. My eyes hurt from the tiny ugly icons and my brain hurts from trying to get everything to work the way it’s supposed to.
Windoze has to be the single greatest drain on productivity in the workforce.
Another way is for all the windows biased IT dinosaurs in these companies should be fired and younger more open minded IT people bought in to replace them who are actually on the pulse when it comes to new technologies and willing to implement better solutions.
But then again… we have more chance of hell freezing over, pigs flying and Steve Ballmer growing his hair back!
” . . . stop cranking out Windows only IT pros by the hordes.”
Because they seem to be able to crank themselves just fine.
I’m not trumpeting but from a response I made to an MDN article a few months back:
In my view, at its root Apple has a purpose that connects with the human spirit and its need for progress, innovation and excellence.
Based on this purpose is the offering: the complete widget – OS and hardware, seamlessly welded together with style and finesse.
That is all Apple have done – deliver to the consumer an offering that connects in a very basic yet profound manner.
Well, the consumer now wants to take his computing experience to work and will eventually prevail.
I have, over the last three months I have watched a good friend (who is in the IT industry) help his friend who had bought a new WinDOS pee-cee, equip that box to display TV programmes, then un-install, re-configure, down-grade from Vista to XP, then back up than move it to the right, and a shake it to the left and, tear his hair out, do the hokey-cokey…
I call that entire non-Mac side of the personal computing world the world of Zeros & Heros.
The Zeros in Redmond and their associated band of add-on/peripheral hardware and software vendors that comprise their eco-system inflict a big problem on their customer. The customer then has to go in search of a local Hero normally in the form of a geeky kid though also many more mature IT industry veterans are also pulled into this role, to bail them out.
My friend, has heroically spent more than 90urs in his endeavour and you got to say it, he is enjoying the challenge of solving the problem while cursing the Zeros in Redmond… Problem solving and the joy of even a minor success (oh! I had to re-write the instructions that came with the digitalTV card in English because the Asian/English was so misleading!!!) is driving the Hero while he battles his way towards a solution.
Good note MDN.
I’ve used that many times, and even posted it here in past articles… Apple uses Macs and iPhones. $30+ billion a year or so in sales. Most companies that think Macs are “consumer devices” as I’ve heard them called before, don’t even come close to the size of Apple. And probably don’t run anywhere near as smoothly.
Here’s the main reason why Apple wont make great inroads in corporates.
Having worked for anumber of years within these types of businesses I can say that the way these companies choose hardware is by a tendering process.
Meaning – for example, say a enterprise is looking for 2,000 new desktop pcs the first thing they will do is create a specification of the hardware and software that would be the standard build for all these new pcs.
They would then send these specs to their business account managers to Dell, Sony, Toshiba etc.
The computer makers would then provide a price for the machines (leased) and a service level agreement cost.
Now the real sting in the tail for Apple is that Apple ONLY make Apple hardware and no other manufacturer.
This is perceived as ‘proprietary’ to enterprises as there is not more than one manufacturer of Apple based hardware.
Therefore Apple will very rarely be considered for enterprises regardless of how amazing their products are.
Sad, but that’s the real world we live in!
I think MDN likes to have at least one “We’re going to take over the Enterprise” post a week.
While the Iphone is likely going to get some enterprise traction, I don’t see any movement for Mac pc / laptops.
You don’t need a mac to support the iphone, just itunes which is available for windows.
We just updated our internal policy (not by ISO but the law and complaince areas) that we will not support personal bought mobile devices. Like any other fortune 100 company there will be excutive “exceptions” but there is nothing driving adoption of iphone or Mac here.
Linking this to the new rumour about tablets, Apple should create an appealing device (like as appealing as an iPhone is today) with high ‘utility’ value for the white collar masses in the world of business.
A Newton on 21st Century steroids.
IT departments of the future will not have estates of PCs in their businesses as workers will arrive at work with their own computing devices that simply recognise and set their context based on whether the user is at home near a domestic Airport signal or in the office near a corporate network (much like how we all turn up in our own cars that fit our own requirements…).
A friend of mine already takes his personal laptop (with wireless broadband) to work in addition to having a PC provided by his employer simply to deal with his personal life as it develops realtime using his personal machine to:
• check personal emails
• trade shares
• on-line banking etc
• and track other personal/social events
All of which he obviously does not want his employer to have access to but wants to do during coffee and meal breaks.
This is how it will happen…
I think what Apple needs to break into the “enterprise” is a mid-range, mid-price tower that’s not bundled with video. Companies will swap out computers more often than monitors, but Apple only offers iMacs (not that expandable, video goes with CPU) and Mac Pros (more power and more expense than the average office worker needs). Come out with a “Mac”, not a “Mac Pro” just Core 2 Duo, expandable bays, decent price.