The Mac Explodes In Business!

Regarding the Mac's growing adoption rate in the enterprise market, the Balitmore Sun recently stated that:

"Apple’s success with consumers has begun to spill over into the enterprise market, with Mac adoption among enterprise customers increasing four-fold in less than two years.

Mac use in businesses rose from 1.1 percent in October 2006 to 4.5 percent in June of this year, according to a report by analyst Benjamin Gray of Forrester Research released Friday and made public by eWeek's Joe Wilcox.

While 4.5 percent of the enterprise market may appear puny next to the nearly 95 percent held by Microsoft’s Windows, it is nevertheless startling that the Mac has made any headway at all in a market in which it had languished for years."

Yes, the Mac is indeed back, both in the consumer and now the business market as well. Of course, as many know, the ubiquitous iPod and now the iPhone has played a crucial role in exposing the Mac to the public. This has resulted in the Mac suddenly becoming discovered by literally millions of new people who would have never given it a mere glance before. In turn, these legends of new and contented Mac switchers have been bringing their enthusiasm for all things Mac back to their work places, and thus exposing the positive benefits to their employers as well, and, as we can plainly see, resulting in more Mac's being used there.

Mac's are increasingly becoming more and more main stream in the work place with each passing day. The Mac has virtually exploded in use among business users, increasing by a whopping four-fold as ComputerWorld also recently noted! This trend is seemingly increasing with no end in sight, but what is particularly interesting, however, is the fact that it is all happening without seemingly any direct input or planning from Apple itself! Apple had basically given up, for the most part, on the enterprise segment of the market, focusing it's efforts instead on the lucrative consumer side. Funny thing is, that on the way to the consumer market, Apple just happened to pick up a nice little chunk of the business market as well!

Another significant factor in the ascendency of the Mac in the enterprise is virtualization. Great virtualization tools from VMWare and Parallel's has done more to get the Mac in the enterprise door than any other single factor, in addition to Apple adopting Intel chips. Virtualization means never having to say your sorry. Sorry that you can't run certain key apps that come only on Windows. Suddenly, thanks to virtualization, the Mac can not only run as much software as Windows, but in fact - even more than Windows! Yes, it is certainly true that Windows has far more native apps than the Mac, but, likewise, so does the Mac have thousands of unique native software too. Now, with the help of virtualization, Mac's can run both flavors of apps - Windows or the Mac's! And let's not forget, Mac's can also run all of the apps on the Linux side as well - the only system that can do so!

Any one who cares to simply glance at the many tech sites or magazines can see that the Mac is growing and now, its not only on the consumer side, but also the enterprise as well. The question is whether or not this is just some temporary fluke, or something that is sustainable on Apple's part?

Unless Apple really, really screws up, I think that the answer is a definite yes!

There are many reasons to believe that Apple will more than sustain it's 4.5 % share of the enterprise market. The obvious reason is that the Mac, as has been stated many, many times before - "Just Works!" Mac's are so much more secure, so much more intuitive, easy and pleasurable to use, be it for work or pleasure. Windows is broken. It's slow, buggy and comes with too much crap trial software installed. It's a lot more secure than it was in the past, of course, but it's still a much greater security risk than either the Mac or Linux. People are simply getting tired of Windows and they want something new, something better, more secure and something that just works.  

The one and only answer:  the one and only Mac!

For these and many other reasons, I believe that the Mac is literally about to explode in numbers and size, and to a point that it will completely, and forever, change the computer market share landscape for years and maybe even decades to come!


And that's my 2 cents 4 this Wenesday, August 27, 2008.

Image via :  Apple

Please vote for this post by clicking the fire button. Thanks!