Macs on the network, time to panic?

They’re coming. Gleaming all-in-ones, metallic slimline notebooks and hand-size ‘mini’ machines. For network admins, the Macintosh has always been the purview of advertising agencies, entertainment companies, educators and home computer users. Mac OS X is merely a minor support issue in a Microsoft-dominated organization. Yet as the consumer market begins to meld with the corporate world even more, and employees expect to use their preferred gadget (and operating system) for work and home life, the Mac could make inroads at large corporations.

Um…I think this is inevitable - at least the ways things are currently going. Call me crazy if you must…but obviously I am not the only one.

(Via macworld.com)

The facts reveal a coming resurgence. Apple sold 36 percent more Macs in the second quarter than the same quarter last year. The company has sold more than 1 million iPhones and 110 million iPods to date. There also just seems to be “something in the air”—or at least the blogosphere — suggesting a Mac resurgence. Blogs such as Engadget.com post about Apple constantly, and even IT analyst firms that have usually downplayed the Mac as “niche” are talking about the platform in the corporate world again.

“We expect that much of today’s IT infrastructure is going to be turned upside down by the invasion of consumer technologies,” said Andrew Jaquith, an analyst at Yankee Group Research in Boston. “Consumerization is going to make IT’s job harder, and platforms like the Mac are going to become increasingly common, in many cases in spite of the wishes of management.”

Will the Macs invade?

Even with OS X-specific support tools, good compatibility with the network layers in a company and a wide range of desktop applications, the one “gorilla in the room” for widespread Mac adoption in bigger companies is the fact that many customized corporate applications won’t work on the Mac. Some companies get around this conundrum by using virtualization software from SWsoft Parallels or VMware Fusion, or by loading Apple Boot Camp on Mac computers so that end users can boot into OS X or Windows.

Apple itself seems uncomfortable with the corporate world and doesn’t actively advertise to the corporate market, suggesting the company is happy continuing life as a consumer darling and has no plans to compete with Microsoft.

If Jaquith and others are right, it’s the consumer who will bring the platform into the corporate world and, it seems, force network managers to support the operating system.

See original article here by John Brandon, Computerworld