“Apple has grown so quickly that it can be hard to grasp just enormous it is,” Robin Harris writes for ZDNet. “CEO Tim Cook tossed out a surprising number in the last earnings call: Apple’s enterprise business is $25 billion. That makes Apple, the world’s largest consumer electronics company, also one of the largest enterprise IT companies. To put that $25 billion in perspective, that is larger than the sales of EMC, the largest enterprise data storage firm…”
“When Apple was the Mac company, corporate IT closed ranks against it,” Harris writes. “But with the success of the iPhone, Apple won senior execs at thousands of companies. When IT balked at supporting the CEO’s iPhone, they got a simple message: figure it out or find a new job.”
“pple is relying on IBM, Cisco and dozens of other firms to bring Apple products into verticals that even Apple, with its enormous sales and profits, could never hope to attack directly. And that saves it big dollars as well,” Harris writes. “Apple has a great strategy… It is so successful that it is starting to drag Macs along with it. Of course Macs have dominated the high-end of the PC market for years, but now with IBM singing the praises of Mac economics — which includes their excellent reliability — Windows-centric IT groups are on the defensive. As the Mac growth rate shows, they’re losing the battle.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: To have advocated for Apple Macintosh here and prior, some of us for decades, and to have fought for Macs at every company of which we’ve been a part, the vindication we’re now experiencing simply couldn’t be any sweeter.
We hope the Mac-blocking, Apple-hating, productivity-killing IT doofuses have either wised up or are suffering immensely as the world around them finally, blessedly wakes up.
SEE ALSO:
IBM: Every Mac we buy is making and saving us money – October 28, 2015
Now we know why IT support hates Macs (hint: Windows PCs = job security) – October 19, 2015
IBM: Corporate Mac users need less IT support than those stuck on Windows – October 18, 2015
Just 5% of Mac users at IBM need help desk support vs. 40% of Windows PC sufferers – October 15, 2015
Companies need to get ready for Apple iPhone onslaught – June 19, 2007
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Arline M.” for the heads up.]
As someone who has made my living in the Apple ecosystem since 1985, it’s nice to see things starting to happen as they should.
Me too – since 1985 as well. UP and down journey…and part of that is Apple’s doing. Let’s hope this time they do right by us old Mac Guys™
I concur. I have battled for the Mac at work for the past 26 years. We barely avoided going 100% Wintel (as directed by the CIO) in the mid- to late-1990s. Fifteen years later I often observe 7 or 8 out of every ten laptops in the conference room are MacBook/MacBook Pro.
The MDN Take ® is spot on! It feels so good when karma works out in your favor!
Apple Macs provided me with a complete career change 28 years ago: first in the typesetting/graphics industry and then in Mac support, where I’m working for a major university.
Thank you, Apple!
I used a Linotype phototypesetter a long, long time ago. Sure glad I learned to type well. Then you had to wait for the film to dry and then there was that oh-so-fun waxing machines……
Then we got these amazing Xerox Star computers…..21″ monochrome monitors with a GUI interface and a “optical” two button mouse thingy. Yes my life was transformed as well.
Then this thing called a Mac came out with this tiny screen and I kept thinking why would anyone use this thing. The screen is so small…..haha. At least I was smart enough to recognize the future.
Pagemaker 3.0 on a Mac Classic. Thankfully we upgraded to an LC soon afterwards and the Classic went to the copywriter 🙂
I work for the largest defense contractor. It’s all iPhones, iPads and Apple TV in conference rooms.On the desktop it’s still mostly windows laptops and workstations with Apple starting to work into the business office areas.
What a long strage vindicating journey it’s been.
The beauty of having Windows desktop machines in most corporate/government environments is that is the best advertising for Macs possible. Every employee who must slog through the day on their Dell is a willing customer for a Mac when they want to buy a home computer.
When people have a choice, they will choose Apple.
I was the only Mac proficient IT Tech @ my last two jobs, where there was a large number of ignored Mac users. So l spent many hours taking care of ignored Apple Mac users, to the point, IT just couldn’t ignore them any longer! Vindication is absolutely great, just great, beyond belief! Hear that Jeppesen & City of Aurora! Hahaha, happy dancing all day long!
Irony
I’ve been an Apple user pretty much from the beginning (with the Apple II). I’ve worked with many companies, including doing work that was sponsored or paid for by many “Wintel” companies or software companies that were PC only. I’ve been given countless numbers of PCs to use or to have, while I’ve purchased most of my Macs.
I’ve always fought the Apple advocacy fight with the thought that I’d never want to go work for a company and be told, sorry, you can’t even use the Mac you purchased yourself here.
And now that we’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, or rather IT departments are seeing the light…
I own my own business and we’re all Apple (except for linux servers and test devices).
One of the largest tech sectors in enterprise is health care. From patient information management (PACS, HIS, and RIS systems) to the boxes that run diagnostic software, large and small equipment (CT scanners, US machines, MRI, etc.), there’s a huge market that Apple hasn’t yet scratched. It’s a large part of the reason that companies like Dell, HP, Lenovo (at this second I’m using machines by all three) and Microsoft (I’m looking at Windows 7 on each) have survived so long.
Apple has had no recent interest in cracking that market, which is fine – it has traditionally required a rapid upgrade cycle that requires disposable boxes and lots of thin-client use, with extremely small margins – not a space that Apple has wanted to compete in. Not to mention armies of myriad developers who are creating code that is almost entirely Windows-based (there may be a few Linux boxes, but I’ve never seen one). There are virtually no viable Apple alternatives for 90 percent of what happens in health care IT – including phone and tablet use and probably even virtual machines.
The health care IT industry will likely only get stronger and grow larger, and it will continue to allow all the non-Apple agents (hardware, software, support, etc.) to thrive, or at least survive.
If more of the industry moves to browser-based and agnostic cloud-based standards, Apple might make some inroads, but from where I sit, it’s a long way off.
I feel your pain. I’m in IT for radiology group that co-owns imaging clinics with the local Megalo-Hospital. Most software systems we use are Windows only and run only on outdated software. We completed our migration from XP to Win7 just over a year ago, and still have to use IE8 for some apps. There really is no way for us to use MacOS as a primary platform.
I’m happy that Apple has grown in enterprise, and as an Apple solutions consultant, I’m happy to have been a part of it. Apple needs to start making their apps enterprise friendly. Just making their apps work with Exchange doesn’t cut it. While Mail and Calendar work well with business communication systems, the Contacts app blows chunks. There is no way for users to have more than one public contacts list. This means that they have to move to Outlook, or use another third party contacts app. That’s not acceptable. Also, Apple seems to have given up on offering a real server product. That’s not acceptable either.