“Look out, information technology managers, Apple Mac computers are invading the enterprise, and though you may have been able to slam the door on them in the past, the era of ‘no Macs need apply’ is coming to an end in the Windows PC-dominated workaday world,” Ellen Messmer reports for Computerworld New Zealand. “That was the spirit of Gartner analyst Michael Silver’s talk at the Gartner conference here [in Orlando Florida], as he shared the consultancy’s outlook on what exactly is going on in the enterprise desktop.”
“The enterprise is still a Windows PC-dominated universe, but Windows is not only being challenged by newer tablet technologies, a subtle shift is also happening that sees users demanding Mac computers, and IT managers no longer can turn that request down so easily, and probably shouldn’t anyway, he said,” Messmer reports. “‘It used to be, ‘How do we keep Macs out,” Silver said. There’s the view that Macs cost more money in terms of hardware, software and IT support, something Gartner says is less the case today than in the past. In fact, today Macs come out, on average, slightly ahead in terms of costs, according to Gartner, though experience among businesses does seem to vary wildly in terms of how easy it is to manage Macs in a PC-dominated enterprise.”
Messmer reports, “The average IT labor cost for Windows is $781 while the Mac is $636, though Silver adds that companies deploying Macs seem to have widely different experiences here, with some easily managing Macs and others finding it “horrendously expensive.” Administration costs, tallied separately, were exactly the same for a windows PC or an Apple Mac. On average, Macs came out slightly ahead in overall costs of hardware, software, IT labor and administration.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Good Jobs, it’s like eavesdropping on a buggy whip convention as they lament the “rise of the automobile” in 1970. How behind the times can you be? We often wonder how much world productivity has suffered due to the damage the average IT doofus and his mentally-challenged CIO have inflicted over the past 30 or so years. It’s an incalculable tragedy: The Dark Age of Personal Computing. No wonder nobody’s walked on the moon in 40 years. Retire or die off already, you ignorant Microsoft Certified roadblocks.
Related articles:
Mac vs. Windows in business case study: Macs have 1/3 fewer problems that are solved 30% faster – June 2, 2008
CIO: Apple’s Mac OS X is the most cost effective operating system – September 24, 2007
Apple Mac desktops, notebooks top PC Magazine’s Annual Reader Satisfaction survey – again – September 18, 2007
CIO: Eight financial reasons why you should be using Apple Mac – August 01, 2007
Switching business from Windows to Mac offers significant savings – July 23, 2007
Mac attack: The world finally begins ultimate personal computing upgrade – January 17, 2012
Mac Attack: Get ready IT doofus, your world is about to be turned right-side-up – November 28, 2011
Hell freezes over: Forrester urges IT to support the Mac – October 27, 2011
Corporate Mac sales surge 66% as Apple makes huge enterprise gains – May 20, 2011
Seems to me like you’re a bit bitter and twisted because the MS PC has been so popular. Hate to rain on your parade, but if MS isn’t in, it won’t be Apple, it’ll be Google.
It may be that Apple never makes huge inroads. But, I can guarantee that it won’t be Google. Companies have too much proprietary information for any of it to accidentally leave their networks.
Google already has a large presence. The Google Search Appliance is all over. Every company I’ve worked for has at least one.
The only problem with your statement is that search and operating system are different things. Although a search engine that is totally internal would do wonders for find and meta tagging networked files.
The Google search appliance is great. But, that does nothing to supplant MS Windows in the enterprise.
You are right.
Google dosen’t have an OS capable replacing windows. At least not yet.
What OS will Google get in with? Chrome? Android?
ChromeOS is a joke, and the 3 large companies I’ve worked with that piloted it quickly dumped it.
The MS PC had been widely used, Robert, but it’s never been popular.
We’re finally putting in an iMac lab in our computer lab building (and displacing a PC lab >8-) ). We’ve had 3 iMacs
in a lab prior that have gotten a lot of use, and the general Mac population is now around 20%. It’s happening.
People still have computer labs? Wow I thought everyone used laptops or netbooks.
I work part time in a school system that replaced 600 Dell laptops with the same number of netbooks.
We thought the laptops were bad, typically 20% inoperable at any one time. Netbooks are 30% and far, far, far slower when hooked to the intranet.
Both junk.
Hey Robert, windows was never “popular”, just cheap. I presume you’ve never used a mac for any length of time? Also, Google doesn’t have an enterprise capable OS, so no clue which orifice you pulled that out of.
The genius of PC has been affordability by offering lower price to very high price fully customizable options. Oddly enough BMw and Mercedes along with Porches copied this very sensible approach to moving inventory about 15 years ago.
For the record, I use both platforms and frankly they do what they are suppose to do with PC knocking it out of the park when it comes to gaming.
Not moving nearly as much inventory these days!
While I don’t dispute the assertion that PCs knock it out of the park for gaming (I’m not a gamer, so I can’t speak from personal experience on that), but I wonder if level of PC gaming is not more a result of the game programers themselves. The OS really doesn’t come into play from what I’ve seen; most games have their own full-screen interface, so most of the capability of the games seems to be that the programer has written the game to a specific hardware set, that simply happens to be the PC-oriented video cards and the motherboard chipset. If the earlier Macs had been dominate, I suspect the programers could have made the Mac the dominant game platform. Alas, it was not meant to be.
Anyway, agree with your evaluation.
I can only hope my IT people finally have their Mac awakening. My desktop PowerMac G4 (late 1999) is getting very tired. If worked in sales in stead of R&D, I could have an Air with an extra Cinema display.
“There’s the view that Macs cost more money in terms of hardware, software and IT support, something Gartner says is less the case today than in the past.”
– that’s NEVER been the case! And as for those organizations finding it “horendously” expensive – I guess the calibre of the I.T. Dept would be worth looking at. Get some Mac dudes in!
Does it really seem likely that Apple will make major inroads with the enterprise crowd? Apple doesn’t push hard enough to sell its hardware to the enterprise. It’s true that corporations are asking for some Apple products, but Apple would really need to get aggressive with group purchasing plans and such. I think that if Windows 8 is good, corporations are going to be flooded by aggressive sales people and Apple products will stay a minor player in the enterprise. I wonder if Tim Cook will really care and just let things stand as it has been in the past.
I know I don’t care. Enterprise holds you back. They won’t spend the money to embrace new technologies and make you keep everything “backward compatible”. No thanks. While I don’t always like how fast and hard the Apple world can change, I love that they push the envelope and deliver really cool technologies.
I have always been astounded how many CEO’s cannot calculate TCO, Total Cost of Ownership. When Macs require one-tenth of the staff to maintain them, licensing/upgrade costs are nearly nothing in comparison, and the amount of time saved each day per person (increased productivity), there is no comparison.
Non-Mac people always make the huge mistake of assuming it’s identical but with more expensive hardware, and not a TCO comparison in sight. Idiots! Why am I the one that’s unemployed?
The last two companies I have worked at offered macs on the desktop.
Why not? They work great and with virtual machines and web based business software you aren’t tied to a windows only world like you were in the past.
I think the article is dead-on accurate. In the last five years I’ve seen a real shift to Macs from Windows. Just go to an airport. 3-5 years ago you might have seen 10% of the folks using Macs in the terminal and on airplanes. However, my last trip overseas a month ago, I’d estimate 75% of the people were using Macs or iPads.
Even in the small city government where I work, the shift to Apple is obvious. First, people exchanged their Blackberries for iPhones and loved them. Then a few got iPads and were really impressed. Now even our Police Department wants to shift to Apple products because they are more secure. Hard to believe how the tide has turned.
If you want to make a lot of money over the next couple years, short MS stock. That ship is going down.
when I went to Mac in 2002, there were only 3 of 220 of us in the night section at my college who had Mac notebooks.
I do not work in an “enterprise” setting, so I couldn’t comment on that. But what has struck me – and I think this is important in terms of making all kinds of people (and enterprises) adopt something – is that these days, on TV, in newsrooms, and in the movies and other visual media, whenever a computer is featured, it is invariably a Mac.
That is the surest sign that the Mac has gone, and will keep going, mainstream.
that will never happen, LOOK at mac marketshare, just less than 10 % in the world..
HAIL MICROSOFT
The Titanic stayed afloat with only a 10 % breech but sunk pretty rapidly after that. It’s called “momentum.”. What was 2.47% market share a few years is now about 10% and in a few more years 15% and so on. The sinking of the MS Titanic will be slower and more painful but inexorable, joining RIM on the list of FAIL.
You must be new here…
Welcome back!!! Don’t be a stranger–this forum needs you!
Mac Market Share Around the World for OSX: USA 15%, Canada 14%, Australia 14%. (March 2011)
Enjoy this, a tribute to your constant struggle to kiss Microsoft’s bottom half, so much for picking a winner……
Microsoft killed off the Zune Officially 3 days Ago due to the complete and total failure that it was, So much for the Name sake, fits nicely..
Stick with just Tang, it works well for you since Zune is dead, but then again this definition of Tang says it all, even of you keep the Zune.
Tang: (n) pungent or distinctive odor.
Says it all ……..
Enjoy.
You TOO must be new here…
Heeeeeeees baaaaaack!!!
Ah Zune Tang, you have been missed 🙂
=:~)
Poor aim, is why.
“Apple Macs invading the Windows PC-dominated enterprise.”
I wish.
Having spent an inordinate part of my working life fighting off IT departments hell-bent on crushing my Mac out of existence, I can see no sign of this alleged Mac invasion.
Windoze is deeply entrenched in the IT psyche. They need it to keep their jobs.
In some business segments, maybe. In the financial sectors, I can’t see it. Most of the enterprise software is becoming server-based and requires IE7 or IE8 to run (thanks, ActiveX). It would take,massive rewrites to use Firefox or Safari.
A request to the brilliant Mac software folks: if you want to disrupt an industry with Macs – build software for banks. That would be awesome.
That’s a great point. Server based systems are the future and if active x is required then it will shut out other oses.
One thing though – these systems need to work with tablets like the iPad too to be really efficient. That could prevent platform specific software from making further in roads.
I find this a funny topic. For years the best game in town was to bait Windows users then sit back and watch them fume. One just had to mention Apple with a sense of superiority. Usually the best time was when they had a blue screen or were in the throes of virus hell.
Recently, a business colleague and friend showed up with an iPad. Apple products are not allowed in his company but it was his personal property and he is a manager so IT made an exception to integrate it into their system. As he and I spent a couple of hours driving between clients, he tethered his iPad to my iPhone. Between emails he marvelled at how easy Apple gear is to connect and use.
When we got to the client, he did a video presentation in front of the client. No waiting for the laptop to boot and load. (A dead time in sales when a salesman has to fill the awkward space with lame jokes.) Without even realizing it, he is being converted to Apple. Still, I miss the days when Windows baiting was so much fun.
I want to know what geniuses are finding supporting Macs to be “horrendously expensive”. When I used to run an IT department back in the ’90’s, we had several hundred PC’s and a few dozen Macs. Literally one third of the PC’s would be down at any one time. Took four full time and one part time tech to support them. The Macs were NEVER down, and I supported them myself with just a few of my hours per week. Total Cost of Ownership on the PC’s was WAY higher than on the Macs, and this was when Macs were substantially higher priced than PC’s.
Right you are. I think the “horrendously expensive” info is a total fabrication by IT FUDsters, who feel the flames of retribution licking at their feet.
MDN’s take sounds like the pain and suffering of forced Windows use at Cornell University. Unless your a designer, a VP, high level admin, or a demanding Professor, you’re stuck on a Dell, regardless of if you tell them you could work twice as fast on a Mac. But hey we got that building going up that Bill and Malinda donated, so CU remains loyal to the ones who sign the checks.
I think more Macs in the workplace could be a real treat for a lot of folks. I work as a freelance writer and whenever I am at a client’s site people seem very interested in my MBP or my iPad. They open the door to the discussion by saying they would like their children to have a Mac.
There is so much stress in the workplace these days. Surely having a computer that is a delight to use would be a good investment in the health and welfare of employees.
You are so right about stress in the workplace. A certain amount of that stress arises from forced use of the Dell computer. The real “walled garden” is the Frankenstein Paradise of the IT drones, with their hegemony of self-serving policies and pronouncements, their laughable gauze of so-called services, their practices of extortion and fear mongering, and their love of human suffering.
I work in the finance industry and it is definitely slow moving. I created a postion in our firm to support ipads/iphones and coming soon Mac! It’s a huge step for a major financial institution but can’t come soon enough!
@”with some easily managing Macs and others finding it `horrendously expensive.`”
Yeah, if you have Macs, the cost to keep all those IT-guys around (who will have nothing to do, because there is little need for them) might be horrendous, by why would anyone?
You nailed it. The dinosaur iron-fisted IT grip has to cope with a new reality. Bigger is not always better.
The desktop computer as a general computing device will be dead within the next 5 years. Quit thinking that Macs will be all over the enterprise. iOS devices will have as better time of it. An administrative assistant’s toolbox will always be a commodity PC and Windows Office. You will never see Macs as general computing devices. You may see more iPads et. al instead of desktop machines. And you art, design and web developers? You will remain a static part of the equation at around 3.5% of users.