Compelling numbers
Recent data backs up the notion of Apple's growing influence, both in the minds of the general populace and in corporate America. On October 21, Apple announced that it sold 2.6 million Macs in the fourth quarter, representing 21 percent unit growth from the year before. And early last month, Mac OS X market share cracked the 8 percent mark for the first time, reaching 8.2 percent, according to Net Applications, which records the operating systems of the machines that access the 40,000 sites it monitors. Windows' share was 90.3 percent.
In terms of enterprise penetration, Forrester Research says that Mac OS use rose from 3.6 percent in October 2007 to 4.5 percent in June 2008, based on more than 50,000 clients connecting to Forrester's Web site. And according to in Steve Jobs in his keynote address at the Apple World Wide Developer's Conference in June, 35 percent of the Fortune 500 are testing the iPhone's new enterprise features, including Walt Disney, Oracle, Genentech and Kraft Foods. Jobs also claimed that more than 250,000 developers have downloaded the iPhone SDK.
Outside of Apple's own efforts, five software companies formed an alliance in June to promote the use of the Mac in the corporate environment, including Atempo, Centrify, Group Logic, LANrev and Parallels.
The group, dubbed the Enterprise Desktop Alliance, says its products enable IT organizations to deploy, integrate and manage Macs, using the same standard tools used for Windows. It claims that enterprises can achieve the same level of control, security, policy compliance and services that they currently have with their Windows platforms.
With all the momentum, there seem to be strong parallels between Apple's intrusion into the enterprise and that of other consumer-based technologies such as social networks, hosted e-mail and blogs, which -- like it or not -- IT organizations are simply being forced to support, albeit this time with some enterprise-friendly hooks.