Time for a change?

Apple and the enterprise—two words that have historically gone together like peanut butter and cheese curds. For much of its history, the computer-cum-iPhone maker has been on the outside of enterprise computing looking in. In fact, it's debatable how much Apple was even looking in. The company has shown little interest in doing what is necessary to woo corporate IT departments and make its case to CIOs.

When I visited the topic of Apple and the enterprise a bit over five years ago, I concluded that Apple had a long, long way to go in order to get its foot in the door. At the time, Mac OS X was still relatively immature, a lot of business software wasn't yet running native on Apple's newest OS, and its machines stood out like sore thumbs among the x86 beige boxes with their PowerPC processors. But nowadays, my, how things have changed.

Apple now has Intel Inside. A larger number of business-oriented apps like Microsoft Office and Lotus Notes now run on Mac OS X, and the increasing number of web applications make the operating system an afterthought for many users. The iPhone is not only the sexiest smartphone around, it's one of the most popular. Most importantly, Macs can do Windows, either through Boot Camp or virtualization. So times have definitely changed, but have they changed enough to get Apple anything more than a toehold into the enterprise?

Some new data from the Information Technology Intelligence Corp. shows that all of these factors have had an impact on Apple's enterprise uptake. ITIC surveyed 700 IT managers and executives and discovered that 80 percent of the respondents had Macs in their corporate environment. Half of those taking the survey said they were ramping up their iPhone integration over and against the popular BlackBerry. And around 30 percent of them are running Windows on their Macs via virtualization products such as VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop.

Still, a stroll through your average cubicle farm turns up little other than Dells, HPs, and other commodity boxes. Is that going to change anytime soon? Not in a meaningful way. There are definitely some opportunities present, but Apple still seems disinclined to follow up on them.

Forces working in Apple's favor

There are three Important trends right now that are giving Apple a foot in the enterprise door: the consumerization of IT, Microsoft's botched Vista launch, and the increasing popularity and visibility of Apple products, especially the iPhone.

In October, Citrix decided to give its employees a $2,100 stipend so that they could purchase a laptop of their choice to use for business and home. Other companies are taking similar steps, and with Apple's US market share growing steadily, consumers who have become accustomed to having a Mac at home are now getting the chance to bring them to work. Mac OS X plays nicely in mixed environments, and the vast majority of Windows-running mission-critical apps can easily be accommodated via virtualization solutions.

If IT consumerization takes off as some expect, it's going to open the door even wider for Apple. Still, it's not going to open the floodgates.