“There’s a good article over at Fortune about how Apple’s iPhone — always intended as a consumer device — opened the floodgates for Apple’s invasion of the enterprise with mobile devices,” Chris Nerney reports for Network World.
“This topic was covered in a March Network World feature that detailed the almost immediate impact of the iPhone on enterprises. As Chris Hazelton, mobile and wireless research director for The 451 Group in Boston, said at the time, ‘The iPhone enabled Apple to enter a door into the enterprise. But that door has been opened by employees already using the device,'” Nerney reports. “In other words, use of the iPhone in the enterprise was demand-driven, not command-driven by IT (‘these are the official tools you must use’).”
Nerney reports, “[Plus] iPad is being adopted in the enterprise perhaps more aggressively than even the iPhone, particularly in the financial sector.”
Read more in the full article here.
“always intended as a consumer device”
It amazes me how delusional so-called business experts are when it comes to analyzing Apple’s success. Do these idiots honestly think that no one in Apple ever heard of the Trojan horse?
They knew EXACTLY what they were doing regarding the enterprise.
Yet the tablet competition, all of whom spouted off about being business oriented prior to their releases, now advertise their devices as consumer devices. Have you seen the TV ads for the RIM Playbook, Samsung Tab, and the HP Whatever? All they show their device doing is games and movies/videos. Apple always includes at least one business oriented bit in everyone of their ads.
Who makes the toy device(s)?
Best Commercial Trojan Horse Ever.
I think this was a brilliant development for Apple. I think this was the only for them to break into the Enterprise market. Blackberry has certainly dominated the market space for so long that they were able to make sub-par gadgets and still make money because the average employee and IT department were used to them. (sound familiar M$?)
Apple had to penetrate that space by weaselling in with the consumer love that it has had for such a long time.
But remember, this isn’t just a win for Apple but for those great devs that are creating apps that run so well on our prized little touch devices.
kudos to the Devs
Anyone who used a blackberry and saw the first ad or demo of an iPhone, had to know immediately what a dramatic improvement the iPhone was over the BB. I don’t care how accomplished you were, the ease of use, readability and speed were an order of magnitude 5x of where BB was, and remains.
order of magnitude = 10x (approximately)
And yet, the IT dept. of my employer refuses to “lower” the security ports it currently has for its POP3 Microsoft Exchange server so that my work Exchange email account will operating properly on the iPhone. For now I have to use Safari on the iPhone to access the Exchange webmail.
Change the ports on your iPhone.
Infiltration through consumerization is not new to Apple. It happened early on with the Apple II and accounting people sneaking it into corporations as “office equipment.”
http://strategicmac.com/2011/05/15/apple-and-the-enterprise-infiltration-through-consumerization/
“Apple’s shift to consumer focus caused many analysts to stop referring to the company as an IT or Computer company and instead as a consumer electronics company. By delivering the best possible IT experience into the consumer market, Apple also began to claim “Mind Share.” People have expectations of what an Apple experience will be like, and their minds are opened to having this experience in the workplace as well as the home.
Employees from chief executives on down are purchasing iPhones, iPads, and Macs and telling the IT department to deal with it. As the nature of IT shifts from the old in house servers and desktop model to one of mobile devices and cloud infrastructure, consumerization of IT will be the norm.
As of late, quarter after quarter, Macs are outselling “PC compatibles,” and a large portion of these machines are going into businesses. Today we use the buzzword “enterprise” and enterprise adoption of Apple’s technology is accelerating. When Apple infects a consumer brain with the high expectations of their products, those consumers become carriers of the Apple “virus” into corporations. Studies and surveys expect corporate adoption of Apple technology to double or quadruple in coming years.
Even more important, the consumerization of IT is yet another harbinger of, you guessed it, the Post-Windows-Era. As we shift to cloud based infrastructures architected upon open standards rather than Windows compatibility, Information Technology more and more becomes a consumer decision.
The IT department itself is morphing into a role of Information Custodians who’s responsibility it will be to manage and preserve the integrity, security, and safety of corporate data. In this new enterprise IT world, people will be more free to pick and choose the technology they prefer and IT competition will be based on who can deliver the most appealing and compelling user interface. Clearly this is more likely to be Apple and/or Google than an organization like Dell or Lenovo. Google also benefits heavily from consumerization. Traditional IT companies such as CISCO and HP are working very hard to create consumer products as they recognize the need to leverage consumerization. CISCO tends to fail at this (RIP Flip), and HP, though a very strong brand with consumers, is still playing catch up.
Recently Apple has become the Number One Global Brand. In effect, this translates to Apple having greater name recognition and value perception than McDonalds. It means more people know Apple than know the number one cigarette brand in the world. This puts Apple in a huge position of strength when it comes to consumerization.”
Here are a few snippets from my posts on MDN over the years:
5 October 2006
[Apple should] Create an appealing device (like as appealing as an iPod 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. 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: he uses his personal machine to check personal emails, trade shares, on-line banking etc
1 May 2009
Imagine a tablet with all the normal stuff on an iPhone plus iWorks, Bento (if not FileMaker), OmniGraffle, XMind, Contactizer Pro (or DayLite) and the ability to present Keynote slides through a data projector or HDTV for a short meeting…
29 May 2909
In other words, “Real personal computing” will happen when I can whip out a MacTablet and within three strokes (key, button, finger or stylus) be able to display the business related item on screen to up to three people (excluding myself) in a review meeting. Or be able to access information relevant to a discussion.
29 January 2010
I can’t wait to buy an iPad. It is not a game changer for me but a natural, yet leveraged, extension of my game. I wrote about ‘Real personal computing’ whereas Steve Jobs referred to it as more intimate than a laptop. As a business consultant, the iPad will be my new ‘Capitalist Tool’ as the ‘return on investment’ will be in EXCESS of a ‘hundred-fold’…
“Consumerised IT” will continue to assault enterprise with ever increasing success! Traditional CIOs and CTOs along with IT functions stand no chance. Their command approach to IT is completely at odds with business innovation driven by staff closest to customer interfaces using consumerised IT!