Why corporate IT won’t get their heads around the Mac
Apple’s share of the enterprise market has stalled south of 10 percent and, although worth billions, it probably won’t be growing in any big way any time soon. The villains? Corporate IT departments, of course, which can’t see the dollars for the cents, which is the argument of old — Macs cost too much and are too much trouble.
Long before insurance industry shills and, of course, their “tea tard” fellow travellers poisoned healthcare reform with their wide ranging campaign of fear, uncertainty and doubt (a.k.a. FUD), there was the corporate IT manager (and his bleating herd of codependents), whose sole apparent purpose for the last 15 or 20 years has been to justify Microsoft’s continuing claim as the world’s most obscenely profitable company.
Silicon.com reports on the unchanging attitudes of chief information officers (CIOs) and why a growing number of Mac users might get their way regardless.
Ibukun Adebayo, IT director of social care organization Turning Point, sums up the FUD perspective quite neatly in saying:
“Before recommending such a radical change for close to 2,000 in-house IT customers, I’d need to consider not only the costs of the software, hardware, and training; but also the intangible costs of inevitable downtime, stakeholder disgruntlement, and more calls to my service desk team whilst staff come to grips with a system that is reportedly ‘quite easy’ to use according to the many Mac enthusiasts out there, but probably more daunting a prospect to the millions who have grown up with a PC and Windows products all their life.”
In a nutshell, they can’t afford to reduce support costs and improve return on investment because it’s too troublesome and expensive.
Tastes bad, more filling
Moreover, Adebayo argues the very thing that makes the Mac attractive to creatives — it just works and the maintenance requirements are virtually nil — needs to be changed before the Apple computers will stand a chance on the corporate desktop:
“Apple has for a long time been associated with producing the best OS system so long as you’re a creative artist or designer. Until it shakes off that image, very few IT heads are likely to carry out a wholesale replacement of their Windows XP/Vista operating systems to the Snow Leopard OS.”
Silicon.com goes on to note, as Mac Blorge has reported previously, that the driving force behind the adoption of Macs in the workplace has been workers themselves. Moreover, with the release of Snow Leopard — Apple’s most enterprise friendly operating system to date — which comes to market with Microsoft Exchange support built-in (something Windows doesn’t offer), will only boost the groundswell of users willing to bring their own Macs rather than suffering the continuing indignities of a corporate issue PC and IT department “support.”
Although the great majority of corporations will never go Mac — i.e. people really do like “lite” beer — it would be more than nice if users of the fairer platform found a warmer welcome on the merits…
What’s your take?
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October 5th, 2009
You lost me at “tea tard.” If you think we are supposed to trust the government with our money you have no business writing anything political.
Take Apple’s advice and “Think different” about government.
October 5th, 2009
Thanks for insulting me and then removing my post!
October 5th, 2009
Blad_Rnr, you certainly had a very good example of what it is to trust Wall Street with our money…
October 5th, 2009
The antipathy to Macs is worse than you think at the in-house tech level – in fact it’s unbelievable the lengths that some systems management types go to to ensure their survival, whilst at the same time ensuring a ‘no Macs here’ message.
I work for a company offering large corporations off-the-peg Mac solutions to multi-media creation, storage, cataloguing and dissemination. We install X-serve systems and highly integrated raid storage, with all the custom built software to handle huge and I mean huge numbers of media files both on a company and world wide basis. We have installed such systems for film producers, mail order catalogue sellers, aircraft manufacturers, government departments, recording industry producers… basically, anywhere there is a need for an integrated system handling anything up to and including the kitchen sink… in the media world.
Where the installation decision is handed off to the existing technical department we often(mostly) have to deal with pure anti Apple hatred where individuals will willingly tell you they fought tooth and nail to sabotage the project right from the get-go. We are used to being offered dirty and poorly(none) ventilated small server rooms, dirty power supplies and little to no help with integration into the existing system set-ups. In fact, it’s almost impossible to garner the support needed at the installation level from existing tech support. Deliveries are delayed, parts go missing, packages are damaged in transit and known faulty parts are routinely offered.
Where the whole installation/set-up is handled by us, we can control all these aspects, but this costs extra and many companies prefer to let their own tech staff ‘do the job they’re employed to do’. Except that they don’t and Apple equipment is then subject to the whims of the support staff who generally are unable to see the benefit of having a self contained system that doesn’t increase their workload.
As if that were not bad enough, we have had to deal with follow-up problems where sabotage has been used to make the Macs look uneconomical and unreliable. One guy installed a power cutoff to ‘our’ Macs under his desk to mess with on a random basis. I attended one board meeting where I was forced to expose the false accounting used to get the X-serves replaced with a Windows system – and I didn’t enjoy exposing someone else’s duplicity.
I really don’t know where this animosity comes from and it’s proponents are generally unrepentant, unable to justify their hostility, or interested in having an efficiently run support system that makes heroes of the IT dept instead of deadbeats.
The fact that we do the majority of system support remotely doesn’t help either…
…but it makes me feel better.
October 5th, 2009
“Think Different” about Corporations, Financial Market and their Republican shills.
October 5th, 2009
Yawn. Unlike a fanboy like yourself, not everyone can do their forecasting or budgeting from when the Apple Store is on or off line. Or has the supreme confidence Jobs Mobs won’t pull specs like firewire from models.
I really wish I had a bunch of Seagate drives locking up for our field personnel and Apple refusing to admit there’s a problem. And it’s always a good idea to not only lock in on the software side, let’s cutoff choice on the hardware side as well.
Just like you confuse Health Care Insurance reform with Health Care Costs reform and can’t understand it isn’t a problem of access to care but affording it, which a Willy Wonka Magic Coverage Card doesn’t change in the least, the desktop isn’t the center of the universe in enterprise I.T. We don’t get woodies over the hammers we use, and you should be careful what you wish for.
There is no way Apple can properly handle enterprise support and remain Apple. The battered wives syndrome that has you celebrating lack of features and options as a benefit would get I.T. Directors fired.
iMacs come as all in ones to keep from cannibalizing Power Mac sales. Apple doesn’t have a sweet spot model in the $800 because “they won’t put out a model that is not best of class” or “we can’t make one at that price point that isn’t junk” . They properly do it because keeping margins high benefits Apple,
Jobs genius is understanding there is a group of humans willing to go through serious psychological gyrations convincing themselves not having 3G is good because it eats up juice. The normal humans see a non-swappable battery as a weakness, that no MicroSD slot means you have to spend more etc……..
Your tiresome boy band fixation Mac Daily News chant of I.T. needing to keep their fiefdom full of issues so they keep their job shows a serious lack of understanding that the price of the desktop is the least of the total cost considerations.
You won’t find the absolutely cheapest hardware in a properly managed Enterprise or a bunch of Linux desktops full of “free” software.
Grownups understand Macs are just PCs, there are no special Apple factories putting out special Intel Procs and Asus and Foxconn aren’t blessed by heaven. Our employees will be pissed with bad LCDs, cracked cases or Radeon video lockup no matter what badge was on the case.
It’s pretty simple. If you have no need for native OSX software buying a Mac is a waste of money.
If you do nothing to reduce the overhead or change a badly broken malpractice system that people treat as a Lotto ticket, if Doctors still start out with triple digit student loans and still have to do procedures that serve little purpose except lower litigation, you end up with uninformed people who believe paying a lower reimbursement to Doctors fixes everything. If you think it makes sense to ram significant legislation spending trillions with thousands of pages of unread law is a good idea you probably won’t ask why it takes dramatic demonstrations to force careful examination and vetting.
You probably lack the ability to understand that the need to reform and the suitability of any solution are not a single issue.
You probably also think paying a premium to limit your flexibility and options to run Windows apps all day is smart. You might even crow about “resale value” and never even consider overpaying in the first place has given Apple an interest free loan while you run old generation hardware. You might camp out for items that are in ample supply.
Grownups see tools to accomplish tasks. That means you don’t tee off with a putter, use a sledge hammer to hang portraits or a tack hammer to drive fence posts. They have nothing to do with self worth and if you use them as a statement for external validation it says there is some work you need to do.
Macs are widely regarded as the best tool for graphics and design because the software for that task is most productive and gives the user a better experience translating abstract concepts to a format for others to understand.
I could label this why Apple users fail to get their head around understanding corporate IT. My CEO and executive management would never bring in a piece of hardware and order me to make it work just like I wouldn’t attempt to make everyone run Linux because it’s what I personally prefer.
We have users running Macs where it makes sense, we have Linux boxes as well. The idea is to enhance productivity using resources efficiently. We don’t put leather seats in technician vans and we won’t pay a premium on OSX workstations that only do order entry and run SAP.
October 5th, 2009
Aquaadverse’s last sentence puts everything into perspective. The box is just a box. The job is all that matters.
October 5th, 2009
Corporate IT’s primary focus is meeting their KPI’s.
Purchasing cheap PC’s means they’re not spending alot on PC’s, even if something better is only marginally more expensive, under-speccing computers is common again simply to help managers meet their KPI’s.
Keeping costs low while increasing your work-load makes you look efficient and productive.
Grown-ups may “see tools to accomplish tasks” but the vast majority of IT people only ever buy what they’re familiar with for no other reason than it’s what they’re familiar with.
I’ve met scores of other techies, all very smart people who just can’t get their heads around macs, using say system preferences rather than the start menu to get to control panels – it’s not rocket surgery, they just heartily don’t want to understand because it’s not what they’re used to.
If your IT people are only comfortable with PC’s then no amount of logic, good management, ROI analysis, fit-for-purpose or any other analysis will sway them.
I doubt your organizations run with drift-wood desks & milk crates for chairs simply because they’re cheap and do the job; your technicians vans could probably be fitted with good seats & tools without too much expense if you bothered at all – but that’s the core of the issue for many, it doesn’t directly affect the decision makers, only the budget directly affects the decision makers and its infinitely more important for them to do a job cheaply than do it well, cost is all they’re measured on.
October 6th, 2009
Good Mac views — not so much on the poli views…
October 6th, 2009
I never said anything about Wall Street. And it was the government who decided to bail out those firms and take over GM and Chrysler. So whose fault is that? Big government!
As far as I am concerned Wall Street and the automakers should have been allowed to fail. Point the blame at both Bush and Obama.
October 7th, 2009
I didn’t say we have substandard seats. we put in pricey ergonomic ones because it makes sense to keep the employee comfortable and productive. Getting them in leather would add nothing except cost.
IT is treated as an expense center, as overhead and is one of the few parts of any organization that directly forces policies and procedures to adapt and has a direct impact on the performance of the individual components. It’s interactive. I get a request for solutions to a problem and it rarely involves just a desktop computer. It’s one of the only parts of most organizations that requires constantly updating and learning new skills. Techies usually seek out new knowledge and challenges and are wanting training and spend their unpaid private time pursuing it. We do WAN and switches, make decisions based on availability of support and service etc…..
Apple isn’t blowing off corporate and enterprise business because they don’t want to sully themselves, it’s because they can’t meet the demands of that sector and remain Apple. We send people all over the world for assignments that sometimes take months. Our international support contract covers them in most of the world, they handle the subcontracting and all the other headaches. I get systems loaned to use for pretesting, including Servers and I have written agreements the same configurations will be available and be serviced for 36 months. We have some with memory that you won’t find easily or cheaply on the open market. Yeah, it’s not the same model hard drive or dvd drives, but you get the idea. They ship systems with our image preloaded. If we run into a problem they have the system their engineers can use to troubleshoot. See what I mean about the actual machine being more or less meaningless in big picture? I could do a “if I handed out a Macbook what would be the total expense to duplicate the same process?” but it would be much more than the difference in purchase price. BTW one of the instruments we use needs a firewire connection because of load and bandwidth and I’m grateful I don’t have to have that conversation with the COO. There are very sound reasons it doesn’t make sense for us to use Macs. And it’s not a bunch of us sitting in our He-man Apple Haters Treehouse swilling root beer and making blood oaths about Macs being used over our dead bodies.
I don’t dictate what’s used, I present solutions to problems with choices and options, but people in charge of a particular division or department make the call. That’s my function. Normally, but not always, it’s what I recommend, because I’ve built up trust The flip side is they wouldn’t just haul something in and plug it up because they understand the scope of the issue.
While I’ve been doing this for thirty years in a lot of different functions, I’m not a Techie in the sense I do direct day to day fixing. You won’t find IT Directors and CIO’s doing it. If you have front line techs making procurement decisions you are in a business, not a corporate setting. The author of this article has no idea what the people he’s quoting mean by their comments.
Stating only the budget impacts the decision makers is ludicrous. Mac fanbois typically have no idea of what corporate IT encompasses and can’t get past their own keyboard as a center of the universe. We do have Macs being used to design marketing materials and multimedia content because it makes sense. It makes no sense to buy Macs to run Windows.
October 24th, 2009
when it comes to business security;
Windows = cannoe at waterfall full of money
mac osx = brinks truck at police station full of money
When it comes to business upgrades
windows 7 ultimate upgrade 230$
osx snow leopard ultimate upgrade 30$
windows 7 some hardware won’t work cause no driver updates
osx snow loepard all hardware actually runs better
takes 40 sec longer to turn on and also to turn off vista
therefore snow loepard saves 15 hours of productivity in 3 years
multiply this by what the employee is paid.