Survey: 68% of businesses to allow Macs as work systems

After years of snubbing enterprise IT buyers, Apple has recently started to market directly to that crowd in The Wall Street Journal.

But it's not Apple's marketing that is paying dividends with enterprise buyers, suggests Laura DiDio, an analyst at Information Technology Intelligence Corp., commenting on a survey ITIC recently published of 700 companies. According to CIO, 68 percent of the companies polled "said they will allow their end users to deploy Macs as their work systems in the next 12 months," twice the percentage eight months ago:

"And Apple hasn't done anything to actively promote this," DiDio said. Instead, faced by users "begging to use a Mac," IT managers are reacting to the "consumerization" of technology in the enterprise.

"It used to be that business computers were more powerful than the ones at home," DiDio noted, "but just the opposite is happening now. The computers at home are more powerful than those in the office." And users want that power where they work.

Even as Apple sees its Mac growth start to slow by 1 percent in the consumer market, analysts expect it to increase in the enterprise market. Is Apple's timing good, or what?

But the good news doesn't end there for Apple, as BusinessWeek details more of ITIC's data:

• Four out of five businesses have Macs present in their environment.
• Half of all survey respondents said they plan to increase their integration with the iPhone as an alternative to Research In Motion's BlackBerry as (a) mobile e-mail device.
• Seven out of 10 rated the security on Mac OS X as "excellent" or "very good."
• 82 percent rated the reliability of Mac OS X as "excellent" or "very good."
• About 30 percent are running Microsoft's Windows XP or Windows Vista on Macs via virtualization, either Parallels or VMware's Fusion.

Even in a bad time for the industry, it's a good time to be Apple. Why? Because it builds products that people want to use rather than those that they must use. One would think that "must" would trump "want" in a recession, but the inverse may actually prove to be true.

[pjhenry1216]

I have to admit I find it ironic that someone who's blog is called "The Open Road" touting Apple as some sort of good thing. They don't even pretend to be open source. They practically tout the closed nature of various things as a feature.

The only upswing I can possibly see coming of this is that when companies realize they aren't forced to use Windows that maybe they'll move to Linux, which is superior all around.

And to say it has nothing to do with Apple marketing is ridiculous. Without that marketing, you wouldn't have so many people the many lies about Windows or even lies about Macs. Macs isn't ultimately superior to Windows. They each have their own advantages and disadvantages which any company can decide what they want. If Apple didn't have the ability to create such brainwashed loyalists, people wouldn't be complaining at work. Employees rarely should be trusted to make IT decisions. The only reason IT would slack is if only to stop the incessant whining of somebody who wants to uproot a companies infrastructure so they can have a pretty interface.

[ballmerisanape]

When people refer to Macs.. they are referring to the OS.. and the hardware.. which, by the way.. runs windows and Unix/Linix platforms naively. Sounds good to me. Also, please explain how Linux in "superior all around" for an end user....

You sound like an old-school IT tech that's worried about job security.. because, lord knows... linux and windows are great for businesses that like having to pay for large IT support teams...

[kast5089]

I'd rather work with a proprietary platform than deal with the freetard crowd on a regular basis. Linux is not "far superior" to anything. At less than 1% of market share, the only superiority it enjoys is with the fanboys foolish enough to spend hours tweaking their XML config files just to get a neat-o spinning cube on their desktop.

[BigGuns149]

Microsoft doesn't pretend Windows isn't closed source either, but do you think a lot of Microsoft customers care? nope. Ultimately while I like the concept of open source most people simply want the best tool for the job regardless of whether it is open source or not.

I would agree with you though that marketing makes a lot of people believe a lot of BS.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Apple will need to drastically change their service support plan if they want to market to the enterprise. Businesses need to have on site repairs/replacements, certified techs that can do the work outside of an Apple support center. That's something they simply do not have currently. If your Mac product fails, you must send it in for repair. Businesses don't have time for that sort of slow turnaround time.

Unless you can send a tech out to repair a system on site and either have the parts with them or get them overnight, then you won't have much luck in competing with companies that have this sort of service level agreement as standard practice.

It's possible- I just don't see it happening anytime soon. Not based on Apple's past practices.

[ssicomputers]

Four out of five businesses have Mac in their environment?

I call shenanigans.

If this was truly speaking to enterprise, 90% percent is MS-based and i'd be extremely surprised to see mixed platforms in an enterprise user. Enterprise tends to buy in quality with uniform systems.

Hell, just the percentage uptick to 68% from half that EIGHT months ago? That suggests that their methodology is wrong a lot more than it suggests that there has been any significant change.

This just strikes of the usual mac-aganda to me.

[rcrusoe]

Think about it, even Microsoft uses Macintosh computers. Many businesses have always had Macs in their medial departments, etc. In the past few years, as more work moves to the browser, etc. Macs have moved into executive and management offices.

Vista's failure to run our legacy software forced us to convert the software to a browser based system which now allows most of our users to run anything with a browser. And most of them, when offered a choice, are choosing Macs.

Macs will never replace Windows, but the day when many business workers HAD to run windows is over.

[BigGuns149]

I would agree with you that most enterprise environments prefer uniformity, but there are quite a few companies that I have encountered that have mixed environments. For example your marketing department might use Macs while your other departments may be standardized on Windows XP.

[Travis Ernst]

Mac has been popular in publishing departments for quite some time. Even if the rest of the office was Windows based. It was not an article that said "macintosh is taking over the world" by any means. Simply that the numbers are increasing in environments that tend to be Windows based. Also that the companies are allowing mixed OS's on the networks.

The fact that Mac can run Duel OS (Mac and Windows) helps in these situations. If they (workers) need to run specific applications they can segment the drive and have the needed apps on the Vista side, and the Mac side for their typical Mac orientated applications.

Linux is a little more complicated than Windows or Mac. If you can understand it and keep it happy, more power to you. However the typical computer person doesn't like trying to find the proper video driver software for Linux, and making sure everything is working fine. You don't need to worry about that as much on Mac and Windows.

[MSSlayer]

Yeah, clicking a button is really frikken hard to do.

That is all it takes to install video, audio, wireless, etc drivers in linux.

It is amazing how arguments that were true 10 years ago, still get parroted by morons.

Linux is infinitely simpler to install and maintain than Windows is.

[kelmon]

The best that I can say is that mine is "tolerated", despite the official policy being that it isn't since it is not a corporate standard. The laptop is my own and I use it at work since it's much more powerful than anything our company buys, plus I have access to software that makes work much easier than if I am restricted to Windows. I look at it this way - if I'm going to have to use something for 8-hours per day then I'd much rather use something that I like and lets me get my work done faster and with less hassle.