Enterprise adopting Apple products as company becomes 'easier to work with'
Apple's recent success in the enterprise comes as the company has worked to cater to businesses' needs, and also as Chief Executive Tim Cook has shown a friendlier side than companies were used to with Steve Jobs.
Profiling the growth in enterprise sales Apple has seen in recent years, The New York Times revealed on Wednesday that while Jobs disliked catering to business needs, Cook is "more at ease" meeting with enterprise customers. It noted that Jobs disliked working with businesses so much that at a conference in 2005, he referred to chief information officers as "orifices."
"While corporate technology buyers say Apple does not try to hide the fact that consumers are still its top priority, they note that the company has gotten easier to work with in recent years, adding features to its devices that make them more palatable to business," author Nick Wingfield wrote.
Previously, under Jobs, corporate customers were often rubbed the wrong way as the outspoken CEO spoke his mind, former employees reportedly said. But even before he took over as CEO, Cook, while chief operating officer of Apple, was said to engage in more communication with the company's enterprise clients.
"(Cook) met more frequently with corporate customers and seemed to appreciate their needs, even if he did not deviate from Mr. Jobs's views about making consumers the priority when making Apple products," the report said.
Apple's new success in the enterprise has been largely driven by the iPhone and iPad, which have seen rapid adoption thanks in part to the "consumerization" of businesses. During each of its latest quarterly earnings conference calls, Apple executives have touted the adoption of iOS devices in the enterprise, and noted last quarter that 93 percent of Fortune 500 companies are deploying or testing the iPhone, while 90 percent are deploying or testing the iPad.
One major corporate coup for Apple came in September, when home improvement retailer Lowe's revealed it would outfit 42,000 of its employees with iPhone 4 units, equipped with custom applications to make the handset a point-of-sale system.
A poll of enterprise device activations in October found that both the iPhone and iPad were top picks by companies, easily besting competing Android products. The iPad in particular showed complete domination of the enterprise tablet market, taking 96 percent of total activations tracked by Good Technology.
Even the Mac has found success in enterprise adoption following years of struggles. Forrester Research, a longtime critic of Mac use for businesses, declared in October that it was "time to repeal prohibition" on Macs in the enterprise, stating that Mac business users are more productive than their PC counterparts thanks to increased reliability and less maintenance necessary with Apple devices.
Profiling the growth in enterprise sales Apple has seen in recent years, The New York Times revealed on Wednesday that while Jobs disliked catering to business needs, Cook is "more at ease" meeting with enterprise customers. It noted that Jobs disliked working with businesses so much that at a conference in 2005, he referred to chief information officers as "orifices."
"While corporate technology buyers say Apple does not try to hide the fact that consumers are still its top priority, they note that the company has gotten easier to work with in recent years, adding features to its devices that make them more palatable to business," author Nick Wingfield wrote.
Previously, under Jobs, corporate customers were often rubbed the wrong way as the outspoken CEO spoke his mind, former employees reportedly said. But even before he took over as CEO, Cook, while chief operating officer of Apple, was said to engage in more communication with the company's enterprise clients.
"(Cook) met more frequently with corporate customers and seemed to appreciate their needs, even if he did not deviate from Mr. Jobs's views about making consumers the priority when making Apple products," the report said.
Apple's new success in the enterprise has been largely driven by the iPhone and iPad, which have seen rapid adoption thanks in part to the "consumerization" of businesses. During each of its latest quarterly earnings conference calls, Apple executives have touted the adoption of iOS devices in the enterprise, and noted last quarter that 93 percent of Fortune 500 companies are deploying or testing the iPhone, while 90 percent are deploying or testing the iPad.
One major corporate coup for Apple came in September, when home improvement retailer Lowe's revealed it would outfit 42,000 of its employees with iPhone 4 units, equipped with custom applications to make the handset a point-of-sale system.
A poll of enterprise device activations in October found that both the iPhone and iPad were top picks by companies, easily besting competing Android products. The iPad in particular showed complete domination of the enterprise tablet market, taking 96 percent of total activations tracked by Good Technology.
Even the Mac has found success in enterprise adoption following years of struggles. Forrester Research, a longtime critic of Mac use for businesses, declared in October that it was "time to repeal prohibition" on Macs in the enterprise, stating that Mac business users are more productive than their PC counterparts thanks to increased reliability and less maintenance necessary with Apple devices.
Comments
I just hope they work to get macs into businesses, not just idevices. If apple made even a modest, minimal effort I suspect they could grab 10% of the corporate PC market for the Mac. And if they were to make an enthusiastic effort thy might be able to eventually double that.
The return on money spent doing this would be better than the return they are getting on treasury bonds, that's for sure. And they would be making the world a better place by aiding all of the poor souls who are forced to use PCs at work.
Apple has been focussed on the Enterprise for years now. Just because they don't advertise it doesn't mean they have not been hard at work. Their enterprise reps would reach out from time to time to find out how things were going and looking for areas they could improve. I work for an enterprise that has over 60,000 employees worldwide and we get a choice between Mac Book Pros and Lenovo. Any meeting you go to now has at least half of the people there with Macs. At some point in the very near future I suspect IT will flip the community support model from the Mac to the PC and just support the Macs. Engineering was stuck on PCs the longest because of tools, but so many tools are now available there is no reason to stay on the Windows. If someone needs to run Windows exclusively, I still tell them to get the Mac Book Pro and just load Windows with boot camp and ditch Mac OS X. The Apple hardware is certainly nicer than the Lenovos.
That's of course nonsense, Apple has proved to us over and over again to not give a rat's ass about enterprise or small business. Nothing, nada, zilch!
Chief Apple's recent success in the enterprise comes as ... Executive Tim Cook has shown a friendlier side than companies were used to with Steve Jobs.
If Cook wants to make any significant inroads in to the enterprise, he'd be better off spending his time making enterprise-class machines, and less time being "friendly".
See? It's easy!
I just hope they work to get macs into businesses, not just idevices. If apple made even a modest, minimal effort I suspect they could grab 10% of the corporate PC market for the Mac. And if they were to make an enthusiastic effort thy might be able to eventually double that.
Apple will have to fill the gap in the desktop line up if it wants more Macs in business. Many companies won't touch an all in one. The mini no longer has something as basic as an optical drive. Businesses that still use optical media aren't going to want a add a bunch of external drives just to get a basic necessity.
If your client wants an a copy of data they can file away a thumb drive isn't an elegant substitute.
Apple will have to fill the gap in the desktop line up if it wants more Macs in business. Many companies won't touch an all in one. The mini no longer has something as basic as an optical drive. Businesses that still use optical media aren't going to want a add a bunch of external drives just to get a basic necessity.
If your client wants an a copy of data they can file away a thumb drive isn't an elegant substitute.
Very true, and I'd like to add that OSX and iOS needs to become more Smart-Card friendly to support things like gov's CAC cards which are a nightmare on the Mac and do not exist on iOS due to the lack of browser plugins and limited BT API support, but do exist on Android.
If Cook wants to make any significant inroads in to the enterprise, he'd be better off spending his time making enterprise-class machines, and less time being "friendly".
See? It's easy!
How are Macs not "enterprise-class"?
Apple will have to fill the gap in the desktop line up if it wants more Macs in business. Many companies won't touch an all in one. The mini no longer has something as basic as an optical drive. Businesses that still use optical media aren't going to want a add a bunch of external drives just to get a basic necessity.
If your client wants an a copy of data they can file away a thumb drive isn't an elegant substitute.
the issue is the vast majority of companies IT groups are run by complete idiots who buy whatever the Microsoft sales rep tells them to buy. they are too incompetent to make their own decisions.
If Cook wants to make any significant inroads in to the enterprise, he'd be better off spending his time making enterprise-class machines, and less time being "friendly".
Then that wouldn't be Apple. It would be another run of the mill PC maker. We like Apple because user experience is the first priority. Unfortunately, I've yet to meet any IT department (or manager that dictates requirements to them) put user experience first. User experience = increased productivity (well, for the most part). IT managers may or may not realize that, but they don't get rewarded based on it. Until that changes, Apple ought to keep focusing on consumer space.
Apple will have to fill the gap in the desktop line up if it wants more Macs in business. Many companies won't touch an all in one. The mini no longer has something as basic as an optical drive. Businesses that still use optical media aren't going to want a add a bunch of external drives just to get a basic necessity.
If your client wants an a copy of data they can file away a thumb drive isn't an elegant substitute.
I disagree. It would save the company valuable resources of not having most users call the IT dept becuase they can't listen to music or there is no sound while they try to listen to their beyonce album. For corporate heads and HR depts. that still use optical media there are usb dvd drives galore.
Apple will have to fill the gap in the desktop line up if it wants more Macs in business. Many companies won't touch an all in one. The mini no longer has something as basic as an optical drive. Businesses that still use optical media aren't going to want a add a bunch of external drives just to get a basic necessity.
If your client wants an a copy of data they can file away a thumb drive isn't an elegant substitute.
I worked in a large corporate-style environment from 1994 - 2005. I used an optical drive (and only for installing software) from 1994 - 1999. Since then, everything was done over the network.
How many people working in corporate environments need to hand data on CDs to people? Not many. Most is via email, or other network means.
And if you do regularly meet with clients and give them optical media, why is purchasing an optical drive, or machine with optical drive so bad? Why buy optical drives for 100% of your employees when only 5% actually need them?
Not only that, but I fail to see why a thumb drive isn't an "elegant subsitute". I personally would be much more impressed to receive a thumb drive than a DVD. Especially since you can get them branded with your company logo when you buy them in bulk.
If Cook wants to make any significant inroads in to the enterprise, he'd be better off spending his time making enterprise-class machines, and less time being "friendly".
See? It's easy!
Do you mean not friendly so as to keep IT departments in control? IMHO Enterprise would greatly benefit from using Apple products and not needing IT as much.
Apple will have to fill the gap in the desktop line up if it wants more Macs in business. Many companies won't touch an all in one. The mini no longer has something as basic as an optical drive. Businesses that still use optical media aren't going to want a add a bunch of external drives just to get a basic necessity.
If your client wants an a copy of data they can file away a thumb drive isn't an elegant substitute.
Except that a large number of Corporates disable CD drives and USB ports via a variety of means. In my mixed Mac/PC environment users cannot install new software for obvious reasons. Control is what large Corporate IT departments want because it vastly reduces system failure and support calls.
How are Macs not "enterprise-class"?
I suspect the answer is really because they don't require IT support
the issue is the vast majority of companies IT groups are run by complete idiots who buy whatever the Microsoft sales rep tells them to buy. they are too incompetent to make their own decisions.
IT guys are not usually risk takers. If they go out on a limb and recommend that the entire network be switched to Macs they would have a lot of explaining to do. To keep the status quo is a lot safer.
Let the top execs and outside sales people have their iPhones and iPads and allow them to access their email from Exchange but that is about as far as it goes. When you are not familiar with Macs it is difficult to keep them secured on the network. For example, I am familiar with one corporation that has their PCs all locked down, no software can be installed without Administrator privileges, however, the art department has Macs and they are wide open.
"easier to work with" means the IT staff have iPhones or their friends have them and they realize they aren't that hard to coordinate with. We've come a long way since 2007 when IT said they wouldn't support iPhones on the wireless network- now all IT are issued iPhones.
How are Macs not "enterprise-class"?
"Enterprise class" has a specific meaning. Redundant power supplies, hot-swappable RAID drives, ECC RAM, etc. Essentially, the machine needs to have a 99.999 % uptime (or something like that).
The xServe was close, but was discontinued. Bringing back the xServe would be a start, especially if it were tweaked to meet all the Enterprise requirements.
That said, there is a near-infinite range of computer requirements for Enterprises. Even a big company might find applications for the Mini or iMac or MacBook Pro or any of Apple's other products. Additional effort in selling to Enterprises might increase sales of those existing products. But none of the current products are truly Enterprise Class - and that needs to be addressed only if Apple is really interested in that end of the market.
the issue is the vast majority of companies IT groups are run by complete idiots who buy whatever the Microsoft sales rep tells them to buy. they are too incompetent to make their own decisions.
Corporate IT departments don't have a clue and seem to get their jollies arguing with people. One fine example was a couple of engineers putting together a PC to run vision system software on. To get the sub second response times they needed a certain Intel processor was required. The corporate IT department couldn't grasp why they would need such a machine.
I've seen so many bad decisions coming from IT departments that I have to wonder how those idiots ever manage to graduate from high school much less college.
That's of course nonsense, Apple has proved to us over and over again to not give a rat's ass about enterprise or small business. Nothing, nada, zilch!
That's certainly not been my experience. I run a small company and my local AppleStore has a dedicated business team who have been very helpful.