How The Mac Is Invading The Enterprise

according to a market study by Good Technology, the iPad owns 90-plus percent of the enterprise tablet market.

However, it’s not just the iOS that’s making inroads on erstwhile Microsoft turf these days. VMware’s VP of Marketing, End-User Computing Erik Frieberg reports that Microsoft Windows’s decades-long dominance of the enterprise desktop envirinment is coming to an end, thanks to corporate BYOPC and BYOD policies transforming enterprise computing ecosystems, and with Macs having become a popular and preferred option compared to Windows PCs.

Frieberg draws our attention to a VMware commissioned survey of 376 IT professionals that was conducted by Dimensional Research to assess the current state of enterprise desktops. The survey produced a report titled “The Apple Enterprise Invasion,” with results showing clearly that Windows is losing its grip on the enterprise.

Frieberg suggests the biggest takeaway from the results is that Windows is no longer the platform of choice in the enterprise, with users overwhelmingly preferring Macs, and user preference being the top reason given by IT administrators as to why they are supporting Macs — 73 percent of IT administrators identifying that factor as the main driver of Mac adoption.

The study found 66 percent of businesses are already using Macs in the workplace, and more than 70 percent of companies officially support Macs as a corporate endpoint.

The top three justifications cited by employees for wanting a Mac were:

• Macs are easier to use (73 percent)
• Macs are cooler (52 percent)
• The Mac display (or perhaps more precisely the Mac user interface?) is better than Windows (42 percent)

On the other hand, the survey revealed that IT department foot-dragging is still a significant factor in holding back the Mac in the enterprise, finding that 75 percent of IT administrators think Macs are not easier to support than Windows PCs and don’t offer better security advantages.

Moreover, many critical business applications don’t support the Mac, with 64 percent of IT administrators indicating that none or only some of their enterprise applications currently run on Macs.

Back on the brighter side, the top MAcs in the enterprise capabilities cited as most valuable to IT administrators are all related to productivity and security:

• Ability to run Microsoft Office on a Mac (59 percent)
• Ability to enable secure access to enterprise applications (59 percent)
• Ability to run Windows on a Mac (41 percent)

Freiberg notes that virtual desktops such as such as VMWare’s Fusion Professional can serve as a helpful tool to bridge the gap between two disparate operating systems in the business environment, with the survey finding that 89 percent of IT professionals affirming that it would be valuable to have a virtual desktop that can run Windows on a Mac, and 91 percent of respondents valuing the ability to run the same virtual desktop on multiple platforms such as Windows, Mac and Linux.

He observes that virtual desktops allow organizations to standardize on the Windows platform in order to support legacy business critical applications without any interruption to business, while still giving employees the option to select their computer of choice.