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Apple Now in the Enterprise Ping!
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Posted on 12/31/2010 4:50:26 PM PST by Swordmaker
InfoWorld - You won't find many businesses with a more complex, security-conscious environment than JPMorgan Chase. So when the huge bank decided to deploy iPads in its investment-banking arm -- following similar moves by Crédit Suisse and Citigroup -- it was more than just a straw in the wind. Apple, long rooted in education, creative endeavors, and (more recently) consumer electronics, is now an enterprise company.
The most obvious trend driving the company's shift, of course, is its smashing success in consumer-oriented electronics. Because so many businesspeople use iPhones and now iPads, IT departments have been forced to accommodate them at work. And despite early concerns for security, few, if any, major business breaches have been blamed on those devices.
"Enterprises have become more consumer-centric. Simplicity and elegance sell; complexity doesn't," says analyst Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research. At the same time, Apple is recognizing that playing in the commodity market for servers is a mistake, he says, adding that the decision to drop the Xserve, Apple's only rack-mountable server, was in line with that strategy.
(Excerpt) Read more at computerworld.com ...
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This is personal productivity computing, not enterprise computing.
In a banking environment, enterprise computing is used to keep track of how much money is in each of millions of accounts, and how much is owed on millions of loans, and process credits and debits into these. You will not find any Apples, or any PCs, involved in this.
A very interesting article. I can see where the iPad and iPhone would be a good solution for many businesses.
Actually, you will. The Aozora Bank, Ltd., of Japan, is 100% run on 2,300 Macs. In addition, at least one Creditcard processing company that I know of runs on xServe Macs running OSX... which, as you may know, is certified UNIX™... which many bank run on their main frames. Here is a photo of the creditcard company's server room of xServe Macs from 2008's Macworld keynote where it was discussed. That's Apple's VP of hardware standing in front of the screen:
The referenced article states xServe has been discontinued.
Everyone aside from my husband in our family has iphones...he cannot because he consults for an insurance company, and apparently they’re not FINRA certified. He’s stuck with his blackberry...
They did discontinue the xServe several months ago... But the xServers are still being used.
Since I know of quite a few banks and insurance companies that are issuing iPhones to their employees, I think the claim that the iPhone is not FINRA certified is certainly wrong. JPMorgan and UBS International are testing iPhones for their employees now. That sounds like an excuse from a lazy IT department at the insurance company. Chase Bank even allows customers to securely deposit checks using their iPhones by merely photographing both sides of the check and electronically transmitting the image to the bank. That is certified by the banking industry to be secure.
Apple still provides the best and cheapest (per user) Server software for Macs. I'd think that a few Mac Pros would do the job quite well. With up to 12-cores, they offer a good bit of power...
Power when (and where) you need it.
The Mac Pro features Turbo Boost, a dynamic performance technology that automatically boosts the processor clock speed based on workload. If you’re using an application that doesn’t need every core, Turbo Boost increases the speed of the active ones, up to 3.33GHz on a 12-core Mac Pro, and up to 3.6GHz on a 6-core system.
Up to 24 virtual cores.
The Intel Xeon processors support Hyper-Threading, which allows two threads to run simultaneously on each core. So, for example, a 12-core Mac Pro presents 24 virtual cores that are recognized by Mac OS X. Performance is enhanced because Hyper-Threading enables the processor to take better advantage of the execution resources available in each core...
"It's like having a couple of billions abacus on your desktop with a couple of billion little Chinese guys flipping the tiles..."
http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/vatech2/
Virginia Tech gained international honors for building the fastest supercomputer at any academic institution in the world. And they did it using Power Mac G5s. From that milestone, Virginia Tech has moved ahead again with System X, a new cluster using 1,100 Xserve G5s.
Thanks for the info! I will let him know, because I know he asked them.
iPads effectively serve as dumb terminals, while the back-end servers still do the majority of the work. As long as data is transmitted from the iPad to the server, via SSL, there shouldn’t be too much concern about security.
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