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"Apple should go after the corporate computing market"

With pet waste disposal bags?

Well change doesn't come easily. We may have wait for the existing corporate IT guys to die off. MDN= "sales"

Billions of dollars in revenue, but very little profit. Just so Dell!

Yeah, go after enterprise servers because Apple's current business strategy is so bad.

Get a brain Moran.

May 13, 08 - 04:19 pm Comment from: Macromancer

Apple isn't large enough to go after such a huge market. What they are doing is getting their products into locations where they 'get it' and Apple doesn't have to do a lot of convincing and heavy lifting to do so.

May 13, 08 - 04:22 pm Comment from: macoverdose_dot_com

I'd say few people out there most of all analysts should be giving apple advice....

boulderfrog:

Who is "Moran"?

Apple dont target corporate business because they know they do not have the resources to provide the level of support that corporates demand.

Oh, and, a lot of their software doesn't really work properly. Try scripting Mail...

"Apple should go after the corporate computing market"

I say No they shouldn't! They have the right ingredients to let the Corporate market come after them! Why run after someone, when you're not really welcome? Let Apple rule the consumer world and make their products corporate compliant. If corps. join the party, then celebrate. But I don't think that Apple should rely on them since they have been jilted in the past by Corporations.

RickW.

Can you Imagine Apple giving outsourcing like HP (before an dnow with EDS), IBM, ACS, Perrot, etc?

If apple always gets the best scores in customer services, I believe that they will make a great support company to lay your business on.

Hey! I wanna write uninformed articles on subjects I have little to draw from but my own assumptions! How much does that pay?! Can I get paid in AAPL?!

Seriously, I don't think Mr. Jobs needs advice. He's never compromised on price or quality. This is why Dell and HP make little profit on their crap machines. Until corporate giants decide to invest in superior product, Steve won't be investing in larger quantities of hardware.

May 13, 08 - 04:43 pm Comment from: Basil Ganglia

I agree that Apple needs to target servers and workstations, but also desktops where computers are used for serious work and not just as dumb terminals. I'm not talking about Apple mimicking Dell and other big box commodity computer sellers in the enterprise. That would be foolish. Apple needs to sell in the enterprise on their terms, which means high quality computers with good margins, making the argument that they bring ease of use, greater security, greater productivity, greater resale value, lower cost of OS licenses, and software updates that continue to run on older computers, which translates into longer hardware lifespan. I think these arguments could be persuasive with many companies, but they need to be buttressed by the kind of support in the enterprise that Apple affords consumers. That's not happening now. And, it doesn't have to cost a fortune.

While Apple shouldn't sacrifice its business model to compete in the commodity computer market, it is foolish to suggest, as some have, that they shouldn't try to increase their market share on the terms above. That will only lead to greater profits, greater stock prices, more software in the games arena and potentially in some vertical markets where Macs are virtually absent (like architecture), and more influence in the computer community.

May 13, 08 - 04:44 pm Comment from: Jay-Z

I just want corporations to stop seeing Windows and Office as the be all end all. I'm a designer, so I will likely always have a Mac. But integrating the Macs into our current IT infrastructure has been a pain not because the Mac doesn't play nice, but because our IT dept. can't be bothered learning how to do it effectively. If more people start using Macs at work, maybe the IT industry will come around and start supporting it properly because they won't have a choice.

Anders Bylund writes for The Motley Fool:

"Mac OS X -- and that's simply a very pretty version of Unix"

*********************
OS X a bit more than that.

If it were not then you could get virtually the same thing from several other vendors on the desktop (and, indeed, on a mobile phone). But you can't, can you? In particular, there wouldn't be the yawning gap that (currently) exists between OS X and the various Linux distros on the desktop (and on mobile devices) -- since Linux is, essentially, just a clone of Unix.

In fact, Bylund is wrong, because Mac OS X is also Quartz Compositor, the Cocoa Frameworks, QuickTime, Core Data, Core Image, and much else.

http://www.osxbook.com/book/bonus/misc/osxinternals/

As for the data center as opposed to desktops, laptops, and phones/PDAs ... I'll leave it to the people who run those. The Xserve may be what they're looking for or it may not be. Their needs are different from those of the public: they couldn't care less whether they have a GUI or not for starter.

I wouldn't know what's best for their purposes, and certainly Bylund wouldn't -- because if he imagines that OS X is "simply a very pretty version of Unix", he knows nothing about the operating system.

May 13, 08 - 04:46 pm Comment from: Hm...

Given the corporate mindset of entitlement to maintenance tools, long-range plans (that are usually so pliable as to be silly), and the preponderance of "professional IT" staff that can't see anything beyond Microsoft (job security personified), Apple should not go after this entrenched market. Let those of us who insist on Macs open the IT doors in spite of the stranglehold MS has.

May 13, 08 - 04:46 pm Comment from: Roberto

30% growth a year is perfect. Slow and steady wins the race.

May 13, 08 - 04:48 pm Comment from: Harvey

Apple has a better strategy.

Microsoft sells to buyers, Apple sells to users. Apple isn't selling to the corporate computing MARKET, or any other MARKET for that matter; it is selling to USERS. Employees have Windows because management bought it for them; management buys Macs because employees ask for them. Apple knows that the way to the buyer's wallet is through the user's satisfaction.

Apple is doing just fine in the business world, and will do even better this summer.

May 13, 08 - 04:53 pm Comment from: Maginary

Don't chase the puck, be where the puck is going. A horrible paraphrase of genius business sense.

"Who is 'Moran'?"

Erin Moran.

He was channeling the feisty spirit of TV's lovable Joanie Cunningham who obviously doesn't know a thing about the enterprise market but just had to chime in anyway. Sisters can be such little pests. Ow, quit it.

What the hell does 'brutally poignant' mean? Does this guy's word processor just string words together in a random fashion?

May 13, 08 - 05:01 pm Comment from: Demon

The XServe is classified as a Big Iron system, and it performs like one too. No doubt that Apple OS and Hardware are ready for the enterprise market. The problem isn't that Apple's not ready, the problem is that the enterprise customers are not yet ready. Job's doesn't look in terms on days, weeks, or months, he's looking down the road in terms of years. You can't go after a market that has hundreds and hundreds of Billions of dollars invested in cheap generic Windows PC Junk. IT guys one don't have the budget to replace all the servers and desktop systems with Apple systems. Microsoft's legacy of proprietary Software lock-in is very well intrenched in the enterprise market at large.

Apple is slowly crowbarring Windows out in some small markets, like in film, TV, and Local Broadcast production, in the Music Product Business, in the health care industry, and in the legal industry. Universities are key to the enterprise at large, more university students then ever before are using Apple MacBook MacBook Pro and come this fall the Macbook Air is going to get Apple a even bigger slice of the higher education market.

It will be a slow but steady enterprise market trend as MS fails to fix Vista issues and as long as they stay on track to make Windows 7 just an upgrade to Vista as their announce strategy as said it will be. In the shift of the next few years IT will be upgrading their old systems to new one. The Question is going to be invest in cheap commodity PC with Windows or move to a proven long term open standard Unix platform like the Apple Mac OS X systems. With Apple continuing market growth IT departments will be swapping and migrating from the proprietary lock-in of MS Windows to the Open UNIX Standard of MacOSX

May 13, 08 - 05:08 pm Comment from: Bobby Skinner

Apple's issues with corporate America run deep. They are rebel artistic people at heart, that don't fit into the corporate mold. That is the stereotype, and there is a lot of truth to it even though Apple is one of the best examples of corporate success.

Apple should stay Apple and not pollute the free thinking culture that has made Apple so successful in the consumer market. However, they need build a wholly owned subsidiary to market to corporate America (and the world). This company should be independently run, sell "Value Added" systems to businesses. This should first include a dedicated sales force to point out the virtues of their Unix based masterpieces, as well as Field Support staff to the product on site. This is the largest piece of the pie. Large businesses want to have sales pushed and managed as well as to have a higher level of service in exchange for their huge purchasing volume. Oddly enough, though they always talk about discounts, they tend to buy overpriced systems compared to the consumer.

They need business leasing programs, but this can be provided from third parties, but Apple needs to bring them to the table and make it easy to do.

Finally, they need a new business software division. Yes, Apple's software is great and much needs little or no changes, there are some differences. This division would be responsible for providing business applications that include the Apple sense of UI design and quality. Not only would they create business apps to fill enterprise holes in the products provided by Apple, but would negotiate changes to Apple's applications that make them more business friendly without impacting their consumer appeal. Apple already has iWork that work great in business, they just need a lot more.

@Hm

"professional IT" staff that can't see anything beyond Microsoft"

Microsoft aren't really relevant to this story. Bylund was saying something along the lines of "OS X is just a 'pretty' Unix and don't these guys use Unix? Hey, how about they use OS X?"

He specifically mentions "Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Dell".

IBM is a Unix vendor (AIX)

... and also a big deployer of Linux: "There are now more than 15000 IBM Linux customer engagements worldwide":

http://www-03.ibm.com/linux/

HP is a Unix vendor (HP-UX).

And plenty of those Dell and HP boxes will be running some version of Linux or perhaps *BSD.

I don't think Bylund knows what he's talking about. OS X is far and away the best OS on the desktop (or on mobile devices). I even suspect OS X server could be quite good for small business. I'm not convinced that it's the best thing in the data center. I think those guys know what they're doing.

Heck Eric Schmidt is on Apple's board, and what's his company running on?

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.google.com

May 13, 08 - 05:11 pm Comment from: G4Dualie

Apple doesn't need the enterprise. The real question is, does enterprise need Apple?

Where is the clarity and contrast of a economic environment absent an Apple Inc.? Or one that would benefit from a culture like Apples? Anyone can be an HP or EDS but not everyone can be an Apple. Hasn't the author realized Apple chose to enrich our lifestyles not our workstyles? I mean, let's face it, you can make an obscene amount of money just delivering happiness!

Bylund sees this market as a challenge to Apple but I seriously doubt Apple is ready to embrace this extremely fickle consumer on a scale of any magnitude. Why should they? The honeymoon is short-lived, followed by years of nagging, and a backslide of business ethics, which were a moving target anyway. And for what? To make your miserable working existence a little more palatable? Productive? Sure, Apple holds the promise of this and much more but I'm sure as long as Steve Jobs is content to explore the most intimate spaces where we live, we'll keep buying. We have a long way to go too! I want to see Apple-branded ARM processors running my home's appliances.

I see a theme for an Apple marketing campaign; We Know Where You Live.

Apple has some serious money in the bank; the fruits of labor for a company firing on all cylinders, because they deliver no-brainer products to a class of people who know the difference. Apple enriches our lives and we show our gratitude in the marketplace. Simple.

Personally, I believe enterprise would poison all that's good about Apple Inc after commanding the lion's share of attention.

May 13, 08 - 05:13 pm Comment from: Macromancer

Moran is a Farkism. aka Moron.

For those data-center guys there's must also the thorny question of the filesystem.

As MDN points out, Leopard is POSIX-conforming. However, that's been gained at quite a cost. The HFS+ filesystem is not a Unix filesystem and Apple has to add a kind-of software layer to make it behave as it should. There's an explanation here:

http://rixstep.com/2/2/20070718,00.shtml

Maybe they'd sooner have their stuff running on Linux or *BSD. maybe they trust ext3, XFS, or UFS more than they'd trust HFS+.

That's just one issue. I'm sure they have lots of reasons for choosing what they do. Bylund doesn't know better than people whose profession this is.

Why does Google run on Linux? Why does Yahoo use *BSD? Did he think to ask them?

Opening up a 'hornets nest' is an apt analogy. I think Apple should continue playing hard to catch with this penny pinching and thin margin market.

Not going to happen. Ever. End of story. See every one of my pervious posts on this subject in various other threads for the reasons.

Unless enterprise comes to Apple and will do it Apple's way, it will NEVER happen.

@pedantic monkey- this is a moran: http://ninesisters.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/get_a_brain_morans.jpg

May 13, 08 - 05:31 pm Comment from: F1Mikal

NO THEY SHOULD NOT!!

Then you have a bunch of corporate leemings complaining that the mac doesn't work the way they are 'used to'.

Too much of a headache.

my 2p

@G4Dualie- VERY well put. I concur with every one of your points, and have been harping on them since Steve returned to Apple and saved them from the sales idiots who ruined them by targeting the enterprise and going for market share.

"Apple isn't large enough to go after such a huge market. "

Sure they are. Apple's bigger than Sun, Oracle, and many other companies in that space.

-jcr

I really love how all these writers (cough) and analysts think they know how to run Apple better than the folks that are doing it now. I would understand if Apple were on the brink of collapse, loosing money every minute, discounting products to boost sales, posting dummy channel inventory numbers to mislead the lemmings, and so forth. But Apple is doing well. The management team obviously has a good idea where Apple is going over the next 5-10 years. They just choose not to share all this information with the public and the media.

And the speculation and wonder goes on. And on. And on.

Apple was intraday over 190 FWIW. Nice.

"Who is "Moran"?"

That idiot congressman from Virginia?

-jcr

May 13, 08 - 05:48 pm Comment from: s

SJ is a mastro, composing an orchestra piece like Mozart. Each application Apple is offering on market do not seem to target enterprise customers, but when combined will become the best enterprise solution available. He just has not completed his master piece yet. I'm sure we will hear from him soon.

Apple should go after the corporate computing market

Just as Toyota and Honda should go after the rental car & taxi cab markets.

Very low margin (if not a money loser), and you commoditize yourself.

While there are specific corporate markets Apple should continue to target (i.e. publishing and design), leave the general disposable workstation to Dell.

May 13, 08 - 06:06 pm Comment from: wannabe

MDN's (and others') chest-thumping about this or that "UNIX Certification!" just strengthens the stereotype that Mac people are completely clueless about Unix.

There are a lot of these so-called "experts" and "analysts" who clearly don't understand a thing about Apple, or about Steve Jobs. Add Anders Bylund to the list.

While there are many technical reasons why Macs may or may not be well suited for enterprise applications, the real issue is this: Corporate PCs are commodities, and Apple is NOT a commodity company. Period.

And thank god, or Steve Jobs, for that. Apple's margins are the envy of the industry because it produces systems with enormous perceived value, and the user is willing to pay for it. That doesn't make Macs (or iPods or iPhones) over-priced; it just means that Apple doesn't make stripped down junk.

As a 24-year user of Macs, and a long-time stockholder, I have no desire to see Apple become the next Dell. The current biz model makes great sense to me; by comparison, Anders Bylund's ideas seem ill-informed and wrong-headed. But that is why he is a nickel-a-word writer, and Steve Jobs isn't.

Dumb Idea. Apple is a Consumer Electronics company.

This is the same stupid thining that would lead to Dell trying a gaming console or Mp3 player, etc.

Apple Branding is just too important. They are kicking butt just the way they are.

"Apple should go after the corporate computing market"

All in good time. All in good time.

A Moran is male.
A Maroon is female.

Steve516

How do you ..loosing money every minute, ...? What is it with adding an extra o when trying to type lose?

let Enterprise come to Apple (if they want to), don't make Apple go to them.

There is a huge reason the Window experience is such a fetid morass... it is geared to IT geeks, pencil-pushers, and bean-counters - everyone comes first EXCEPT the end user. That is why they trowel on layer after layer of backwards compatibility and insufferable DRM (for the content providers) that renders the Windows experience (particularly Vista) all but useless- and worthless.

Microsoft is beholden to far too many outside influences- they create such a mediocre product, it's the only way they survive- Apple DOES NOT want to go down that path, have their OS architecture dictated to them, or compromised, by the needs/wants/demands of outsiders.

All they have to do is continue building the better mousetrap, and the Enterprise will follow if they care to.

Personally, I don't care one way or the other. I rather hope Apple chooses to stay small, nimble, innovative and very profitable- rather than pursue the big bucks and turn into another Lumbering, Lazy Monolith of Mediocrity like M$.

I've never understood this phrase, "corporate compliant". It's a computer. They all do the same thing. They run software. They browse the web. They "do email". Nearly all corporate applications now are web-based - from sales-force automation to document management to CSM's to CRM's to scheduling and project management. Is anyone really running installed applications anymore? So 1995! We use a wiki for all of our corporate documentation - everything centralized, everything searchable instantly, usable by anyone with any web browser brand on any platform! If you are still into the 1990's "document" thing, then both MS Office and OpenOffice run on both platforms.

I have been running an OS X 10.5 iMac at a 150-employee company for a year as my main workstation [my Vista box is a door stop], in a 85% Windows-centered company. I abandoned Microsoft after 25 years of loyal service with the release of the disaster that is Vista. For over a year, I have had no problems whatsoever interacting with "the enterprise" or any of the enterprise's clients. I have Mac Mail connected to MS Exchange Server, sending and receiving all of my email. Yes, Mac Mail supports Exchange by default. Exchange appointments and meeting requests are sent to me as an iCal attachment [yes, this is built in to Exchange] that is imported into iCal with a single click - reminders work and everything. I can even perform all Outlook's functions locally or remotely using Safari or Firefox and Exchange's browser-based mail. We also have several Xserves that have performed flawlessly for years - robust and very powerful UNIX servers. How is the Mac not "ready for the Enterprise"?

Like Apple is fond of saying, "Our products are designed for people."

If Apple doesn't pursue this, the females will form an alliance that is too strong for Steve to penetrate. We need to form a unified Mac mucus alliance NOW to repel the enemy.

You are either with us or you are dancing with the stars. Traitor.


P.S. Steve has a mini Wraith that will eat your lungs.

From D.O'Connor to dear Steve516

"How do you ..loosing money every minute, ...? What is it with adding an extra o when trying to type lose?"


Because young, drunk and stupid beats the crap out of having a clue?

@chair-throwing, simian-like CEO

You're right I think the file system and APIs are really stopping OSX getting anywhere in the server space.

This article was about severs and workstations both of which have much higher margins than iMacs and MBPs. Apple isn't going for this market because it would split their focus, they're a consumer electronics company.

May 13, 08 - 11:53 pm Comment from: Predrag

If Macs were in the corporate space as much as Windows, we would now still be running OS9 on Motorola 68k processors (or at best, with PowerPC). The types of changes that Apple did to its OS (and in the process, to its app developers), from 68k to PPC, carbon to cocoa, OS9 to OS X, and the ultimate one, PPC to Intel, leaving legacy apps' code in the emulation sandbox dust, would be absolutely out of the question. When you lie in bed with big enterprise (like Microsoft did a long time ago), you are forced, most of the time, to play their game. Enterprise is the reason why in Vista you can still run DOS applications. I am having a very hard time wrapping my mind around that one.

Many of us kick and scream when Apple announces some major transition, like the ones mentioned above. In the nineties, these had caused erosion of market share. They no longer do that, but annoyance to the users and developers they have and still do very much. Still, I wouldn't have it any other way. Because of those, I now run fastest, most efficient, secure, elegant OS on most affordable, elegant, efficient hardware.

“Enterprise is the reason why in Vista you can still run DOS applications. I am having a very hard time wrapping my mind around that one.”

You can still run dos applications in OSX too, try wrapping your mind around that.

http://www.dosbox.com/

How refreshing!

An informative, intelligent thread on MDN!
This happens, alas, too infrequently.

My sincere thanks to all the posters here.

May 14, 08 - 02:25 am Comment from: Micro Me

Although they may seem like opposing views, I agree with both iq9 and G4Dualie. I'm the sole Mac user in my workplace of around 400 staff, and there is very little I cannot do, or attach to, on my Mac, with a little co-operation from IT. Exceptions include accessing a few proprietary intranet systems and downloading from some older data loggers, for which I use a PC laptop running Windoze 95 (yep!).

While it would be great to have company, I don't think Apple should bend over backwards to accommodate the corporate sector. Entry can be achieved in stealthy increments – continue to make great hardware and software, and smaller, creative companies will take it up. Inevitably, larger companies will take note, and slow infusion will occur. But, I think there is a certain incompatibility between making elegant computers and the staid requirement of the corporate sector, and we need not expect (or wish for) any major entry by Apple into this area.

And I also agree with The Muffin Man. Good to see an intelligent thread.