Four out of five business have Macs on their networks - study
A survey of 750 global IT administrators and C-level executives by the Yankee Group found that nearly four out of five businesses — or approximately 80% — have at least a few Macs and the Mac OS X operating system installed in their networks.
"Although the Apple Mac hardware and OS X operating systems still represent a small niche, adoption and acceptance of Mac hardware and operating system software are growing at a steady and sustained pace not seen since the late 1980s," the firm said.
Of those who responded to the survey, nearly one-quarter said their firm had a "significant" number of Macs installed in their network, in excess of 30 or 50 units.
The Yankee Group cited a number of factors that it believes are fueling the adoption of Macs in the corporate world, such as Apple's sophisticated Safari web browser, iChat, an enhanced version of the FileVault security that provides disk encryption to protect data stored on Macs in the event a machine is stolen.
Also weighing in Apple's favor is the Time Machine embedded backup solution that ships as part of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, as well as its tool chest of Anywhere Applications features, such as embedded virtualization capabilities and the Back to My Mac feature that makes it easy for remote users to use the internet to remotely access files on their home computer using MobileMe.
Though not the focus of Yankee Group's study, Apple's encroachment on the enterprise market has been aided in large part by its entry into smartphone arena, as outlined by a Piper Jaffray report earlier this year.
With multifunction handsets a staple of most corporate ecosystems, the ability to market the iPhone to business users is changing, ever so slowly, the company's perspective on selling to the Enterprise, according to analyst Gene Munster.
"While Apple will let consumer demand drive the product decisions it makes, the company recognizes that every consumer is likely PC user at work, and we expect the company to focus on improving its outreach to Enterprise users," he said.
Following its recent iPhone Software 2.0 announcements with Exchange support and other enterprise solutions, Apple announced that over a third of Fortune 500 companies had sought access to the company's ongoing iPhone Enterprise Beta program.
42 Comments
Of those who responded to the survey, nearly one-quarter said their firm had a "significant" number of Macs installed in their network, in excess of 30 or 50 units.
I'd like to know percentages and if any of these are employee-bought machines.
Please look up the meaning of pervasive! I don't think I would call Macs an "unwelcome influence" on corporate networks. I think they are probably there for a pretty good reason and hardly "unwelcome".
The Yankee Group cited a number of factors that it believes are fueling the adoption of Macs in the corporate world, such as Apple's sophisticated Safari web browser,
I would imagine that any corporation doing in-house advertising/marketing work is likely to have few Macs running Adobe CSx. It is the number one reason PC centric IT managers will concede to allow them. As far as security is concerned the Mac users are usually free to do and install anything they want without intervention of the corporate IT police unlike their PC using coworkers who's machine are so locked down they would be lucky if they could change the color of their desktop. IT guys don't usually want to have anything to do with maintaining Macs.
Yes, at our publicly traded company exceeding two billion in Sales, our marketing team has 4 iMacs and a Mac Pro.
Cool to see them in a building where we have 1000 plus windows machines, all on XP.
Our IT VP claims they will never use Vista.
And they also welcome more and more iPhones everyday.
To me, this is the proverbial water dripping on a stone that ultimately leads to the frickin dam breaking. Apple now has two types of devices (Macs and iPhones) that are finding pockets within enterprises, each of which complements, integrates with and extends the other.
Initially, the inroads were spot consumers bringing their device of choice to work. Then, it was workgroups pre-disposed to all things Apple, like marketing and communications. Next, verticals like entertainment, media, pharma, technology and education, are starting to make larger IT supported buys.
To be clear, with such tiny percentages as a baseline, huge relative growth lies ahead before the law of big numbers starts to create inertia.
I have blogged about the WHY side of the equation in:
Holy Sh-t! Apple's Halo Effect
http://thenetworkgarden.com/weblog/2...hit-apple.html
Check it out if interested.
Cheers,
Mark