Over the last few weeks, it seems like the information technology press has been full of stories about this company and that company abandoning Windows for the Macintosh platform. In the July 16th issue of the highly-respected IT trade journal, Computerworld, the lead article was Mac Attack! An enterprise PC shop switches to Apple. This article described an automobile processing shop, Auto Warehousing Co., based in Tacoma, Washington, formerly a total Windows shop, that is migrating nearly all of their IT operations to Mac OS X. Their primary database is still on Microsoft SQL Server, so for the time being, employees will have Parallels installed on their systems to access this information. A Java application is being developed to replace the Windows front end to the database, which will eliminate the need to even have Parallels on their laptops and workstations. The database will remain on SQL Server, because unlike many of the desktop applications, “it just works”, according to CIO Dale Franz. Other than SQL Server and the ubiquitous Exchange server for email, all other web and data storage servers have been migrated to Apple Xserve machines.
Computerworld included several sidebars to this story including more tech details, and a very interesting story about what really prompted AWC’s move to Windows. In a nutshell, Microsoft started a program a few years ago to certify bigger customers, ensuring all license agreements were correctly adhered to. Unfortunately, they chose to do this in a very misleading and nasty way, by telling their customers that they were not in compliance and that legal action could be taken against them unless they agreed to be audited by a Microsoft-approved auditing firm to do perform a complete license audit of Microsoft operating systems and applications at their site, in spite of AWC’s CIO Dale Franz being able to prove to a complete certainty that all licences were fully compliant.
Anyhow, that’s just one success story. Noted curmudgeon and Mac-basher John C. Dvorak of
An interesting blog titled Apple’s Stealth Campaign for Business? discusses the inroads Apple is making in the corporate world.
At yesterday’s (this is being written on August 8, 2007) new product announcements, Apple CEO Steve Jobs (as if you didn’t know that) noted that one of the new iMac bundles was a CIO’s dream (or words to that effect).
More and more Macs are showing up on the loading dock at corporations, big and small, and the IT folks are being told, more often than not, to deal with it. Creative organizations no longer need to be saddled with bland Dell/HP/Gateway/Compaq/fill-in-the-blank boxes. If there’s a compelling corporate application that’s really needed, install Parallels or VMWare with Windows, or for that matter, Mac Office 2004 with Entourage. If you need to be “managed” by your IT folks on a Windows Active Directory network, there are now tools galore to do the job, such as ADmit Mac from Thursby to join your Mac to an Active Directory network, and DirectControl from Centrify to apply group policies to networked Macs. CIOs and IT managers who in the past stood in the doorway to block entry of any of those “foreign” computers are now being pushed out of the way themselves, or at least are being told to “get with the program.”
So, while the IT staff is blocking iPhones from corporate entry at the back door, Mac desktops and portables are boldly walking through the front door. It’s a great time to be a Mac user.
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