“How big a deal is the Apple-IBM deal?” Jim Cramer asks for TheStreet. “Wrong question — how smart is the Apple-IBM deal for Apple? VERY. To me, this is all about IT — meaning that the objections of the IT departments are finally being met from the ground up. We all know what’s been going on at companies in this country for years and years. Ingrained IT people have been reluctant to support Apple, because Apple is a consumer company. They always want us to carry around many devices. They always plead that it is security that keeps the WINTEL system in place with its Blackberry adjunct.”
“We are all sick of hearing it. We — or if you are older, like me, our kids — would not want to buy a WINTEL device unless someone put a gun to our heads, which is exactly what the Information Technology departments in almost all large companies have been doing for years and years,” Cramer writes. “IBM rebuts the objection. IBM is one of those shot-calling companies that shouldn’t be calling the shots but just does. All of us have experienced, at one time or another, the brick wall that is IBM, which stands for ‘you can’t use Apple in this barren ecosystem.’ Now IBM will stand for ‘you have to retrain all of your people to support Apple, and we are no longer blessing the security issue against Apple.'”
“Watch the wins. Watch the rip-outs. Watch the ground-up groundswell. That’s what will tell you if we can really raise numbers for Apple,” Cramer writes. “Raise numbers for IBM off this? I just don’t see it. But it is hard to believe that numbers can stay the same for Apple.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Suck it, IT doofus!
Windows is what people who don’t know any better – or who are forced by the resident IT doofus – struggle to use. – MacDailyNews, June 13, 2011
As the current crop of aging IT doofuses retire or get pink-slipped or, uh, “otherwise move on,” bright, efficient, and productive Mac-using IT people will take their place. Then The Dark Age of Personal Computing, an age in which we have never participated except to marvel at the insanity of it all from behind our vastly superior Macs, will finally end. The last bastion of resistance and stodgy backwards thinking is dying off. Hallelujah! Welcome, productivity! Buh-bye unnecessary hair-pulling stress! – MacDailyNews, September 29, 2010
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I am shedding so many tears for them… of laughter.
This is great news for both companies and a scary perspective for Microsoft and Android. Especially for Microsoft who will become irrelevant in both the Windows and the mobile business.
It is great news to see something like this happen. I wish this could extend to Europe and oter parts of the world.
Tim Vook isn’t a show man, he does things in a way its competitors only see it coming when it explodes over their heads and it is too late to do someting.
Go Apple, go!
Those of us in IT that embraced Apple long ago know what these long time holdouts are about to learn. Yes it will take some leaning of new things, and a few headaches along the way, but in the end, your life will be so much easier. And with the support of entrenched enterprise companies like IBM it will only get easier.
Gene Munster is downplaying this union. Says it won’t do much for Apple at all. I’d actually thought Wall Street was waiting for Apple to cement some solid relationship with the corporate world and this would seem to be the move. Munster says no and it won’t help Apple’s hardware sales at all. With IBM’s software there’s no way in the world that iPads and iPhones will be considered toys not fit for business. This collaboration should remove that stigma forever. I’m starting to believe that Tim Cook will not be able to impress Wall Street with anything because they’re fixated on the fact that Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs.
The changes in thinking and device usage taking place in the upcoming generation will satisfy this problem, given a little time.
Well, this certainly is out flanking Google for enterprise, where Microsoft and Dell live. I’m just wondering if we may yet see a microsoft / google tie up in response. Strange bed fellows this will make.
If companies are interested in security, any partnership between Microsoft and Google will likely be met with peals of laughter.
Don’t forget. Google is just an advertising company. Oh, and they make a couple of really shitty hardware products. And an even shittier insecure fragmented “operating system” android.
Why has no one ever spoken of the possibility of Apple buying IBM. Seems that would have been a great move. This agreement is probably better.
This is not only BOOM, it is Nuclear BOOM!!!
Android, Google, Microsoft – crash & burn.
Halo effect: we will see Macs adopted into the enterprise sooner than we can imagine. Afterall, PC’s in the enterprise are nothing more than clients with problems.
“Halo effect: we will see Macs adopted into the enterprise sooner than we can imagine.”
I don’t have any doubts about this. I think Apple and IBM will capitalize on the Continuity feature, as well as the security of Apple’s OS X.
This is a way sweeter victory over Apple’s competitors that using courts.
Apple never buys that which they can get for free. The value is IBM’s name, cachet, and service infrastructure. Apple just got it for free. “No one ever got fired for buying IBM.”
IBM has several small slices built on big iron hardware, etc., but most of their service fortune (and fortune as a whole) was tied to SS Microsoft. IBM wins by replacing the sinking ship with a high flying platform with plenty of future.
Apples’s Continuity will mean all sorts of devices will come into the enterprise, not just iPads, iPhones, and Macs. All lovingly supported by IBM with less drag on AppleCare.
The layoffs are just the beginning Microsoft. You are heading into ruff times.
I like Cramer’s vivid word pictures. Gun to the head — yes. Brick wall — yes. Rings true.
Into the I.T. sanctum sanctorum, IBM walked through the front door, whilst Apple has sneaked in through the back. Now both can boldly stride in together, albeit to a certain amount of sniveling at first.
More like Apple smashed Windows to get in.
I’ve read the statements and watched the interviews of TC. There are no mentions of Macs. This partnership is about iOS an mobile computing. I wouldn’t start dreaming of Macs on every desktop just yet.
As was mentioned above, Halo effect. When IBM is massaging data into forms palatable for iOS, intervening computers will become less critical and OS X can generally handle data formatted for iOS better than Windows can. The increasing integration between OS X and iOS will make it easier to justify switching.
It won’t happen immediately or across the board, but it’s definitely an inroad.
I asked a tech at a large company why they alway urge the clueless office managers to buy Microsoft products for the company? “Because they break!” He said. “Macs don’t break. I’d lose my job if they went with Macs.”
Exactly. The Wintel “ecosystem” is designed to keep hordes of IT consultants in business. Generally speaking, you need about 1/4th of the Wintel manpower to run an equally large Mac environment.
I remember the time (quite a few years ago) when a well-managed Wintel environment came close to requiring the same manpower as a non-managed Mac environment. That’s when Apple started with management software of its own in order to regain its distance, and they did.
This is what he said:
To me, this is all about IT — meaning that the objections of the IT departments are finally being met from the ground up.
This is what I read:
… IT departments are finally going to be ground up.
… A happy thought for happy dreams tonight.
That would be a grate sight when the dust settles.
Stop mincing words, chuck out the old grind and ready a rousing round of regeneration.