Four out of five business have Macs on their networks - survey
The presence of Apple products in the enterprise is much more pervasive and complex than previously thought, according to new study, which reveals the Macs and the Mac OS X operating system are now gaining significant momentum among corporate users.
A survey of 750 global IT administrators and C-level executives by the Yankee Group found that nearly four out of five businesses -- or approximately 80% --have at least a few Macs and the Mac OS X operating system installed in their networks.
"Although the Apple Mac hardware and OS X operating systems still represent a small niche, adoption and acceptance of Mac hardware and operating system software are growing at a steady and sustained pace not seen since the late 1980s," the firm said.
Of those who responded to the survey, nearly one-quarter said their firm had a "significant" number of Macs installed in their network, in excess of 30 or 50 units.
The Yankee Group cited a number of factors that it believes are fueling the adoption of Macs in the corporate world, such as Apple's sophisticated Safari web browser, iChat, an enhanced version of the FileVault security that provides disk encryption to protect data stored on Macs in the event a machine is stolen.
Also weighing in Apple's favor is the Time Machine embedded backup solution that ships as part of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, as well as its tool chest of Anywhere Applications features, such as embedded virtualization capabilities and the Back to My Mac feature that makes it easy for remote users to use the internet to remotely access files on their home computer using MobileMe.
Though not the focus of Yankee Group's study, Apple's encroachment on the enterprise market has been aided in large part by its entry into smartphone arena, as outlined by a Piper Jaffray report earlier this year.
With multifunction handsets a staple of most corporate ecosystems, the ability to market the iPhone to business users is changing, ever so slowly, the company's perspective on selling to the Enterprise, according to analyst Gene Munster.
"While Apple will let consumer demand drive the product decisions it makes, the company recognizes that every consumer is likely PC user at work, and we expect the company to focus on improving its outreach to Enterprise users," he said.
Following its recent iPhone Software 2.0 announcements with Exchange support and other enterprise solutions, Apple announced that over a third of Fortune 500 companies had sought access to the company's ongoing iPhone Enterprise Beta program.
A survey of 750 global IT administrators and C-level executives by the Yankee Group found that nearly four out of five businesses -- or approximately 80% --have at least a few Macs and the Mac OS X operating system installed in their networks.
"Although the Apple Mac hardware and OS X operating systems still represent a small niche, adoption and acceptance of Mac hardware and operating system software are growing at a steady and sustained pace not seen since the late 1980s," the firm said.
Of those who responded to the survey, nearly one-quarter said their firm had a "significant" number of Macs installed in their network, in excess of 30 or 50 units.
The Yankee Group cited a number of factors that it believes are fueling the adoption of Macs in the corporate world, such as Apple's sophisticated Safari web browser, iChat, an enhanced version of the FileVault security that provides disk encryption to protect data stored on Macs in the event a machine is stolen.
Also weighing in Apple's favor is the Time Machine embedded backup solution that ships as part of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, as well as its tool chest of Anywhere Applications features, such as embedded virtualization capabilities and the Back to My Mac feature that makes it easy for remote users to use the internet to remotely access files on their home computer using MobileMe.
Though not the focus of Yankee Group's study, Apple's encroachment on the enterprise market has been aided in large part by its entry into smartphone arena, as outlined by a Piper Jaffray report earlier this year.
With multifunction handsets a staple of most corporate ecosystems, the ability to market the iPhone to business users is changing, ever so slowly, the company's perspective on selling to the Enterprise, according to analyst Gene Munster.
"While Apple will let consumer demand drive the product decisions it makes, the company recognizes that every consumer is likely PC user at work, and we expect the company to focus on improving its outreach to Enterprise users," he said.
Following its recent iPhone Software 2.0 announcements with Exchange support and other enterprise solutions, Apple announced that over a third of Fortune 500 companies had sought access to the company's ongoing iPhone Enterprise Beta program.
Comments
Of those who responded to the survey, nearly one-quarter said their firm had a "significant" number of Macs installed in their network, in excess of 30 or 50 units.
I'd like to know percentages and if any of these are employee-bought machines.
The Yankee Group cited a number of factors that it believes are fueling the adoption of Macs in the corporate world, such as Apple's sophisticated Safari web browser,
I would imagine that any corporation doing in-house advertising/marketing work is likely to have few Macs running Adobe CSx. It is the number one reason PC centric IT managers will concede to allow them. As far as security is concerned the Mac users are usually free to do and install anything they want without intervention of the corporate IT police unlike their PC using coworkers who's machine are so locked down they would be lucky if they could change the color of their desktop. IT guys don't usually want to have anything to do with maintaining Macs.
Cool to see them in a building where we have 1000 plus windows machines, all on XP.
Our IT VP claims they will never use Vista.
And they also welcome more and more iPhones everyday.
Initially, the inroads were spot consumers bringing their device of choice to work. Then, it was workgroups pre-disposed to all things Apple, like marketing and communications. Next, verticals like entertainment, media, pharma, technology and education, are starting to make larger IT supported buys.
To be clear, with such tiny percentages as a baseline, huge relative growth lies ahead before the law of big numbers starts to create inertia.
I have blogged about the WHY side of the equation in:
Holy Sh-t! Apple's Halo Effect
http://thenetworkgarden.com/weblog/2...hit-apple.html
Check it out if interested.
Cheers,
Mark
Damn, he musta got run over by that light at the end of the tunnel.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/...ng_Macs_1.html
The thing is, if Apple had never switched to Intel, this penetration never would've happened.
More than a quarter of the firms surveyed -- 28 percent -- said that they are running Windows in a virtual machine on the Macs they have. Slightly fewer, 22 percent, confirmed that their Macs are set up to boot either Windows or Mac OS X using the latter's built-in dual-boot utility, Boot Camp.
Having a mac on my desk means that I'd be using office for the mac, which is still not truly cross-platform after all these years. So if I compose on the Mac, I'd still have to at least check my documents on a PC. Plus I use a ton of VB scrips in excel fr simple data analysis. That means no Mac for that.
Visio is not available on the mac, so I need a pc for that.
Real CAD (proE etc) isn't around for the MAC, so I'm on a PC for that too.
So a big piece of my day is either validating my work on a PC or in bootcamp/fusion/parallels doing work in windows.
So until business uses truly cross platform software or stops passing files around, mac's will always be second class citizens in a windows office.
As much as I love the mac, I don't need that sort of headache in my work day, I've got enough things going on.
Frankly, I'd rather do my papers in LaTeX than word.
Sheldon
I'd like to know percentages and if any of these are employee-bought machines.
Indeed. I often have people asking me how I got a Mac Mini on my desk... "I went to the Apple Store and bought it myself." It sucks to spend $850 on personal equipment for the office, but it sucks less than using the Dell they gave me (which has been reformatted with Linux).
Frankly, I'd rather do my papers in LaTeX than word.
LOL... Most of my college papers were formatted using troff and nroff
Please look up the meaning of pervasive! I don't think I would call Macs an "unwelcome influence" on corporate networks. I think they are probably there for a pretty good reason and hardly "unwelcome".
As far as I can understand, "especially of an unwelcome influence" doesn't mean that it has to mean that it must be an unwelcome influence to be a valid use.
I'd like to know percentages and if any of these are employee-bought machines.
Yeah, 30 to 50 machines without knowing the total number makes it a worthless number. If we're talking major corporations, that might be enough for a small branch office.
A survey of 750 global IT administrators and C-level executives by the Yankee Group found that nearly four out of five businesses -- or approximately 80% --have at least a few Macs and the Mac OS X operating system installed in their networks.
I feel like I'm reading something from a salesman now.
It states "nearly four out of five". The author goes on and leads the reader to believe it's approximately 80%. That could easily have been written as "at least three out of five" which in doing the math can be written as "more than 60%" which is a big difference from approximately 80%.
Nothing like playing with the numbers.
I feel like I'm reading something from a salesman now.
It states "nearly four out of five". The author goes on and leads the reader to believe it's approximately 80%. That could easily have been written as "at least three out of five" which in doing the math can be written as "more than 60%" which is a big difference from approximately 80%.
Nothing like playing with the numbers.
That sort of thing that happened in the article reads like the writer was paid by the word. I think that would explain why so many AI articles that mention that Apple is based in Cupertino, California, even though it's most likely common knowledge to almost all AI readers and it's completely irrelevant to the story.
I feel like I'm reading something from a salesman now.
It states "nearly four out of five". The author goes on and leads the reader to believe it's approximately 80%. That could easily have been written as "at least three out of five" which in doing the math can be written as "more than 60%" which is a big difference from approximately 80%.
Nothing like playing with the numbers.
It also could have been 599 out of 750. In which case nearly 4 out of 5 or 80% would be accurate.
Your analogy only works if they only surveyed 20 or 30 companies. And each company accounted for 5, 4 or 3 percentage points. But when you survey 750 companies Each company only represents .133 percentage point. So it's actually possible to have 79.867%. Which is nearly 4 out of 5 or 80%. And no where near 3 out of 5 or 60%. No matter how you play with the numbers.
IT guys don't usually want to have anything to do with maintaining Macs.
Mainly because they're not necessary. Most PC issues are user errors through poor design or IT-inflicted through poor configuration. Apple designs both of these culprits out.
Please look up the meaning of pervasive! I don't think I would call Macs an "unwelcome influence" on corporate networks. I think they are probably there for a pretty good reason and hardly "unwelcome".
Like most non core-business employees IT's first order of business is self-preservation. Given the former point I'd say OSX is definitely unwelcome especially as many of it's benefits fall outside of IT's comprehension namely improved business productivity.
McD
IT guys don't usually want to have anything to do with maintaining Macs.
Exactly. And that is why my MacBook Pro has a neatly locked down Windows XP living in its VM Ware Fusion box, while the Mac side is free as a bird, even with a separate IP address, but not on a Windows domain.
As for how I got it, simple, the top guy at my office likes Macs and thus authorizes their purchase. IT does not support them but nobody cares. Then again, this is a shop with developers who can maintain their own machines (some guys run Linux, also unsupported). I'm not saying the model applies in any company, but there are a lot of developers and power users in the corporate world who are always looking for ways to run around dreadful IT "support" (read limitations, corporate spyware, etc.).
Interesting thing is that some of us are starting to look into Cocoa development, now that we have these machines, and the iPhone provides further incentive.
The thing is, if Apple had never switched to Intel, this penetration never would've happened.
Absolutely. No way I could have asked for a Mac without putting a Windows VM in it.
I'd like to know percentages and if any of these are employee-bought machines.
Some are, but most of the ones I've seen are company machines. This has a good side, you can get Mac Pro or MacBook Pro machines. But if you crave a MacBook Air forget it. You are going to have to get that yourself. It's not considered a work machine. Perhaps in the fashion business it might be. I have no idea. But not in the regular world.