Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Where Apple Won't Go

I remain befuddled by Apple Computer's outright thickheadedness with regard to their products and the American enterprise.

It's plain for all to see that Apple want absolutely no part of selling into corporations other than boutique art houses, or any other non-consumer segment other than schools. Yet despite this, Apple publishes a link to a story - on their own Apple "Start" page no less - highlighting the fact that 8 in 10 companies in America have Mac computers in production.

...

So, which is it - you don't care about corporations, or you're proud of the penetration your products have made into the enterprise space?

If it's the latter, how about actually ramping up an enterprise business unit? You know, with financing and on-site support programs and all the rest, like the other big kids?

Apple has done so poorly at speaking to the enterprise, that a group of five companies this week decided they'd do it for them. I love one of the quotes in the story.

"There's an information vacuum that we want to fill," T. Reid Lewis, president of Group Logic, told InformationWeek.


That's for damn sure.

Given that the newest iPhone is touted as having "enterprise" hooks, vis-a-vis integration of sorts with Exchange mail systems (not exactly in-use at many homes), one can hope that Apple's efforts to get into the enterprise will become a bit more purposeful than the X Server or X San. They need only the slightest breath to break the logjam holding Mac computers back from overrunning the enterprise space. That they pay us no attention is becoming less of an interesting quirk, and more of an insult.