RSSApple’s lack of enterprise ambition
eWeek's Don Reisinger has an editorial up titled "Should Apple Even Care About the Enterprise?" in which he answers unequivocally "no." Reisinger lays out all the usual points; Apple is a hardware, rather than software business, with a decidedly consumer focus, limited experience and little interest in the enterprise market. Even if it were, it would be fighting a decidedly uphill battle taking on the entrenched Windows environment and application software base in the modern enterprise, and would stand little chance of success regardless.
This is all true and pertinent, but it leaves out one minor detail: the iPhone.
"So what?" you say. "Another consumer device. They'll sell a gazillion of them and retire fat and happy."
And they are selling a gazillion of them, more every time you turn around. But a funny thing happened on the way to the bank with the iPhone profits… they started coming from corporate America. The iPhone, it develops, is just the thing for jaded execs. They want 'em, they want to use them for work as well as play, and they want everything to work with them. You'll note the way Apple fell all over itself getting ActiveSync and Exchange support into the device when a wave of demand sprung up. Expect to see more such demands focused around other enterprise integration as time goes by. The company has put together an Enterprise Deployment Guide for the device and has actively courted enterprise admins, if not CIOs, with a host of changes to make administration and integration easier and better.
All of this iPhone goodness is starting to open executive eyes to all things Apple. Combined with Microsoft's fumbling of Vista, and aggressive enterprise licensing terms, Apple looks pretty good these days, save for all that pesky enterprise software lock in. Oh, what's that you see on the horizon? Web-based Software as a Service penetrating the enterprise market? Interesting!
The point is, Apple is likely to find itself dragged backward into the enterprise whether it thought it wanted to go there or not. The extension into business isn't likely to stop on a hard line drawn at the iPhone, and Apple would be silly to try to keep it there. The iPhone phenomena demonstrates the new reality that many enterprise employees already face: work doesn't occupy a clearly differentiated space in their lives. There is no separation between devices used for work and at home. Apple, attempting to occupy one of those spaces, doesn't rely have much choice but to accomodate the other as well if it hopes to continue to find success.
