The news that 200,000 IBMers will be getting shiny new MacBook Pros is stirring a lot of noise about Window’s decline or the quiet rise of Apple in the enterprise (depending on who’s view you take.) I, however, think there’s a much broader issue to consider and that’s how cloud computing is making “platforms” a thing of the past.
As little as 7 years ago, if you wanted to get work done, you did it on your local machine. The internet was nothing more than a highway for information; bits flying across digital fast lanes taking what was on your machine and moving it to another. The cloud has changed all that. No longer does the spreadsheet you and three others work on live separately on everyone’s machine with everyone sending out the latest “version” every time they hit save. Now the document lives on a server and we all make our changes and do our work on the same file.
Apple’s rise to acceptance in the enterprise hasn’t been because of a slew of new enterprise features or the kind of dedicated support and sales the Microsoft so famously pursued. Far from it. Instead, Apple has creeped into the enterprise on the coattails of the cloud; and will likely continue to do so as more and more work moves off the platform and to the web.
This is good news for Apple and for the enterprise. Apple is getting access to a large, well-funded market without having to spend the money or resources to “cater” to it. They aren’t having to sell to enterprise clients and they aren’t having to dedicate time and resources to enterprise demands. They just keep making the same great products that people want and as the enterprise can accommodate it, they will. The enterprise, who’s mantra is to buy hardware as rarely as possible, is quite happy to make the investment in Apple products who’s lifespans can be many times what a typical Window’s machine survives. They also are less prone to service calls and failures, which makes IT people happy as well.
The long time sticking point for most in the IT world was network access and network security. Now, as more and more we move our data to cloud services who handle security protocols over the web anyway, this last major road block is fading away.
To be sure, there are still companies who’s security needs will keep them running the most controllable platforms they can. But as cloud security becomes “good enough” for many if not most companies, how we access those clouds is less important.
Stable, easy to use machines that work with all the devices we use seamlessly will become more important. The future of IT- even in the enterprise- is going to become increasingly user focused and Apple is in the perfect position to capture that. While Windows 10 might be great on the desktop, users are increasingly mobile and will continue to find features like Apple’s “Continuity” more appealing.
By focusing on individual productivity and ease of use, Apple is setting themselves up to be a power player in the enterprise of the future.
Who’d have guessed?
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