Mixed emotions on Apple’s enterprise evolution

Apple's interest in the enterprise hasn't always been obvious. And though the company changed its ways to some extent during the past few years, it still prefers to let its devices and services act as its entryway into enterprise.

Many IT leaders would like to see Apple focus more on the business market, but they also understand the company may never act like a traditional enterprise vendor. Apple's business partnerships with Cisco, IBM and SAP are well-publicized, but those deals are the exception and not the norm, according to a set of CIOs and IT leaders who spoke with CIO.com.

Why Apple's awkward approach to enterprise works

Many turning points have helped change the IT industry's perception of Apple. However, CIOs often disagree on the relevance of specific events to enterprise, based on the special interests and IT requirements of their organizations.

"Apple is garnering more respect and consideration given their penetration of the market and willingness to integrate with other competing technology companies," says Brian Kelley, CIO of Portage County Ohio, in the state's northeast region. "The most important behind-the-scenes move Apple has made for the enterprise is definitely involving increased compatibility with Microsoft and other application developers."

Apple made strategic moves for business by beefing up security and administrative controls for its software and devices, but those changes weren't necessarily geared at enterprise, according to Shawn Wiora, CIO of Creative Solutions in Healthcare, a company that owns and operates nursing facilities. Like many CIOs, Wiora never made a conscious decision to embrace Apple. Instead, colleagues that wanted to use Apple devices mostly made that choice for him, and Wiora had to figure out ways to support them.

"Apple's dominance in the mobile handheld space at the C-level really opened up more doors than [Apple] walked through in the enterprise," Wiora says. "[iPhone] became the de facto mobile device for executives very quickly."

Today more than half of Creative Solutions' employees use iOS devices, and Wiora says specialized business consultants at Apple stores provide many of the support services. "We have a growing respect for Apple relative to our enterprise needs," he says. "We're experimenting with their support offerings while developing a growing relationship with in-store business consultants."

However, Apple's in-store support can't always satisfy urgent enterprise needs in a timely fashion, according to Wiora. Apple also isn't worried about catering specifically to businesses or catching up with competitors in the enterprise market, he says. "They're doing what they believe the enterprise needs at the time regardless of what others would do."

Link to article: http://www.networkworld.com/article/3106257/ios/mixed-emotions-on-apples-enterprise-evolution.html