Can Apple Take Over the Enterprise?
At a recent Apple March 6 Event, Steve Jobs and some of his team outlined both the iPhone Enterprise Beta Program and iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK). While the long awaited SDK has been eagerly devoured by developers across the industry, I was keenly watching the Enterprise Roadmap.
In a nutshell, this allows the iPhone to connect to a Microsoft Exchange Server using ActiveSync. Thus, the end-user can receive “pushed” e-mail, calendar events, and contacts. This one area signals a storm that is long overdue in the world of technology, the introduction of a truly disruptive technology such as the iPhone & iPod Touch.
For a long time, Microsoft has catered to the goliath of enterprise business, giving this audience just enough of what they needed to hook them into an ever growing web of Microsoft products. They quickly understood that businesses wanted integration across their networks, to bring a common user interface (UI) to everyone. Why spend a lot of time and money on integrating software platforms when you have at least a promise of integration with a suite of solutions by one provider.
Microsoft leveraged their dominance in the desktop market to grow into the office suite, back office products, and even the mobile market.
Apple on the other hand had floundered without Steve Jobs at the helm, and has been playing catch-up for quite some time upon his return. However, by “the 4th quarter of 2007, the iPhone surged to a 28% share of the US converged device market…” (TechCrunch). With the veritable flop of Vista (to date), the surge of adoption of the iPhone and iPod products, and the launch of the iPhone Roadmap Apple stands poised to ride a cresting wave of unfounded end-user adoption…
Even though many people are making a big deal out of the iPhone, there are some other key things that hold true adoption of the Apple offerings back, and those are 3rd party application integration. Sure you can run Office 2008 on a Mac, but does it really work? Does it really play as well with the OS as it might on Vista?
Enter virtualization technologies… and I’m not just talking about Bootcamp or parallel here people; there are revolutionary new offerings whereby applications themselves can be pushed to the desktop for an extremely rich user experience while allowing IT an easier path to management.
And let’s not forget SaaS (Software as a Service). The ability to have an almost desktop-like experience is quickly replacing the “old” model of licensing and extending the enterprise across work and home computers securely. IT staffs are scrambling to handle more diverse fleets of hardware and software every day, and the resurgence of centralization (e.g. virtualization and thin/web clients) is gaining some tremendous ground and attention.
All these things play to Apple’s advantage, as the underdog. However, these are just as easily capitalized on by others as well. So what is the catalyst that will tip Apple over the edge to gain true marketshare? Giving customers what they want how they want it… see Starbucks!
I’m going on record! I predict that IF apple continues on its iPhone Roadmap, continues to develop disruptive technologies (as they have proven they can do), and can keep giving customers what they need and want, in 5 years Apple will have between 25% - 45% marketshare in the business desktop/notebook space.
Yes, Apple can take over the enterprise! Next, can Apple unseat RIM BlackBerry?
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ChangeForge... a catalyst to affect the paradigm by Ken Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.changeforge.com. -
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