Apple is 'pervasive in the enterprise,' says IBM

Computerworld ^ | June 16, 2017 | By Jonny Evans

[Swordmaker]

While there remain some industry observers that cling to rapidly diminishing arguments against such deployment, “Apple devices are already pervasive in the enterprise,” Mahmoud Naghshineh, General Manager, Offerings and Solutions, IBM, told me.

Naghshineh spoke to me as IBM expands its MobileFirst iOS for the enterprise scheme. He echoes Mike Brinker, Global Digital Leader, Deloitte Digital, who last year called Apple’s products “essential to the modern enterprise”.

[Swordmaker]

IBM says that “Apple devices are already pervasive in the enterprise.” The article goes on the state "According to Good Technology's Mobility Index Report, iPhone accounted for 72 percent of all enterprise smartphone activations during the first quarter, while iPad accounted for 81 percent of tablet activations." — PING!

Apple's iOS Devices Are Pervasive In Enterprise
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[publius911]

Stupid Question

[datura]

Pervasive because their products work without the heavy baggage of Win based systems.

I used to be an MS OS only guy, now I won’t touch them.

[roadcat]

I used to be an MS OS only guy, now I won’t touch them.

I responded on another thread about Rush, He was saying Apple never writes software for non-Apple products. My comment was that I used Apple iTunes on an Intel Windows PC long before I did so on a Mac, which were non-Intel based. So Apple did write software for PCs. I digress. Like you, I got tired of the "baggage" on the Windows machines, and migrated to mostly using Macs.

[noiseman]

I predicted this several years ago in a discussion with one of our IT managers. At the time, he said that they were looking at buying Blackberry Playbook tablets for senior management. I told him they were crazy, as Blackberry was finished, and they should be preparing to accommmodate iPhones and iPads, since that was what everyone had as personal devices, and no one was going to carry multiple devices.

In the end, I was right, but they bought a bunch of useless Blackberries anyway. It took a long time to snap them out of that Blackberry trance in the enterprise environment.

[noiseman]

Just to add....

I also remember the IT guy saying that they had invested too much in a dedicated Blackberry server, to which I laughed and said, "It doesn't matter. The market is going in a completely different direction." It is maddening sometimes how large organizations become fixated on where they have been, rather on where they should be going. It's a little like saying, "We can't get those newfangled horseless carriages, because we've invested too much in wagons and buggy whips."

[proxy_user]

The problem is, if you have 300,000 employees, it takes three or four years to make the change. By the time you finish, the “new” technology is obsolete.

[FreedomPoster]

Apple’s security model is such that I wouldn’t allow another mobile device (i.e. no Android). But would still want some sort of enterprise mobile device management.

[itsahoot]

So Apple did write software for PCs.

Not really they wrote software for Macs and decided to make a version that ran on the PC in order to sell iTunes products.

They did make AppleWorks 5 run on a PC used to have both versions on the CD.

[roadcat]

Not really they wrote software for Macs and decided to make a version that ran on the PC in order to sell iTunes products.

If you knew anything about computers, you would know that Intel processors are different than the processors in the Mac at the time. They had to rewrite it to support the Intel machine code. Making "a version that ran on the PC" is the same as writing software for the PC. I've written machine code since the 1970s, and different CPUs use different instruction sets, not to mention whether it supported 8, 16, 32, or 64 bit architecture. You can't just port over a program unless it is emulated and it is therefore crippled.

[CurlyDave]

The problem is, if you have 300,000 employees, it takes three or four years to make the change. By the time you finish, the “new” technology is obsolete.

I don't care whose technology you use, it needs to be refreshed on a 3 or 4 year cycle. Just start replacing Windows with Mac and in a few years you are switched over. You still have to refresh. Cycle is longer with Macs, but it is not infinite.

[ReignOfError]

That has a name: The sunk cost fallacy. It’s what keeps people sending money down a hole so that the money they already put down the hole isn’t “wasted”.

[ReignOfError]

They did make AppleWorks 5 run on a PC used to have both versions on the CD.

They also made Filemaker for Windows before spinning it off as a separate company. In the past, they made QuickTime and Safari for Windows, which were made obsolete by better alternatives (like Chrome, which uses the same WebKit engine as Safari). They are still supporting iTunes, iCloud, and Bonjour, and Windows drivers for Apple hardware (required to make Boot Camp work).

[itsahoot]

They also made Filemaker for Windows

Dang I forgot that, gave my CD version to a friend for his PC, way back.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

I help develop and support data systems and infrastructure products for a Fortune 100 company. Apple products are pervasive but not within the enterprise.

Customers we service have a great many users who use Apple products which are served by our products because that's just good business. But within data centers there is a dearth of Apple doing the serving.

[zeugma]

I just wish they’d do iTunes for Linux

[roadcat]

Customers we service have a great many users who use Apple products which are served by our products because that's just good business. But within data centers there is a dearth of Apple doing the serving.

So true. I've worked in a lot of data centers, and seen the fighting and politics of management favoring one type of vendor over another, with multiple vendors in the same data center. Supported a lot of flavors, including WANG, IV-Phase, DEC, IBM etc. Generally the data centers with mostly Apples tended to be art studios, publishing houses, music studios and education centers. Strangely enough, one site where I saw a large penetration of Apples among other machines was in a police headquarters.

[ReignOfError]

Apple hasn’t even made a rack-mounted machine since 2011, when it killed the Xserve. I’ve seen offices with Mac servers, but they tend to be small enough that the “server” is just a desktop machine doing file and print sharing.

The Xserve was aiming for companies big enough to need rack-mounted servers but small enough not to need an expert admin, and that’s a pretty small niche, which has gotten steadily smaller as cloud services have gotten more and more attractive.

[ReignOfError]

The Xserve was also thrown into the fray in 2002, when there were a lot of server OSen — Unix was pretty dominant, with Solaris, Linux, and Microsoft gaining market share. It looked like a market OS X could take a bite out of. By the time the Xserve was killed in 2011, it was pretty much all Linux and Microsoft running on commodity hardware, and there wasn’t really a place for a premium-priced machine sold on its easy-to-use OS.