Apple on the Enterprise level

[ArcticStones]

Quote: Originally Posted by cwtnospam And if I were to ask somebody at Microsoft what they're trained on, I wouldn't necessarily expect them to say Macintosh!

Well, Microsoft does have a section developing software for the Mac. In fact, they did a reasonably good job with Office. And they wouldn’t do such a thorough job of "borrowing" OSX ideas if they lacked people with in-depth Mac expertise!

Quote: Originally Posted by cwtnospam On the other hand, if I take my car to an independent repair shop (Which is what an IT department is!) then I don't care what they're trained on, they had better fix my car if they want my business.

Your analogy seems flawed. And it points in a different direction.

First: Who is the "I" in your analogy? If it’s management, then yes. If it’s the user, then no. As Carlos makes clear.

Second: Many companies limit the number of makes and models in their car park for good reasons -- including limiting the expertise required of their mechanics, and to increase the efficiency of similar repairs.
Same thing holds true computers and the company’s IT department. Which of course may mean making a strategic decision not to deal with Macs at all! Or Windows PCs for that matter.

[cwtnospam]

Quote: Originally Posted by tlarkin 1) Securing a network has nothing to do with macs or PCs, it has to do with routers and server products, switches, firewalls, fireboxes, spam filters, etc. Apple does not offer any good products, MS does, Cisco does, and a decent router can usually replace a server in some cases which is cheaper and lower maintenence, and a lot of times more secure.

That simply isn't true. Most (not all) breaches require Microsoft software.

Quote: Originally Posted by tlarkin 2) It is in no way any IT department's fault for Apple's short comings on the enterprise level. If Apple made a kick ass enterprise solution some people would adapt to it. They don't, and from what it looks like they aren't even trying to tap into that market, see my tons of prevous posts for reasons in this thread.

I didn't say it was. I'm saying it's IT's fault for trying to solve every problem with a Microsoft centered solution. When all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and it is an IT department's fault if it has chosen to focus solely on one OS as a 'standard.'

Quote: Originally Posted by tlarkin 3) Having your network infastructure in place actually already saves you money since you already have all your things in #1 I mentioned for your network. Adding mac clients really doesn't make it that much more secure and a lot of security flaws fall into the users not using secure passwords or staying logged in their account, or any other million things a user can do to mess up security. It is a factor that every IT person just takes into account. Apple does not offer anything better, and just saying it is more secure means nothing in the real world. Because if Apple were used more in enterprise levels and have a larger market share, you would start to see spammers, hackers, spyware, malware, etc start showing up for the mac. The fact remains that they are more secure because they aren't as widely used. Apple is not immune to making dumb choices and not leaving loop holes in their OS. Just read the technotes on the security updates from OS X. Apple has already documented everything they mess up on.

Where do I begin??? With the security by obscurity myth, the blame the user mentality of myopic IT departments, or the fact that Apple has closed holes before they have been exploited, not after?

Quote: Originally Posted by tlarkin Have you seen Microsoft's Apple room? Where there are shelves and shelves of mac computers? Where their tech people and developers play with them to learn what they are about, so they can implement things into their OS to make them more compatible. Since windows 2000 MS has actually had apple talk support.

I said I wouldn't necessarily expect them to be trained on Macs. That many actually are puts Microsoft a step above the average IT department. Ow! It pains me to say that!

Quote: Originally Posted by tlarkin Also about costs, like I said earler,

And as I said earlier, the HP is no bargain.

Quote: Originally Posted by ArcticStones Second: Many companies limit the number of makes and models in their car park for good reasons -- including limiting the expertise required of their mechanics, and to increase the efficiency of similar repairs. Same thing holds true computers and the company’s IT department. Which of course may mean making a strategic decision not to deal with Macs at all! Or Windows PCs for that matter.

The "I" is the stock holder, who legitimately expects that the INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Department (NOT the WINDOWS TECHNOLOGY Department) can and will integrate all forms of technology from mainframes down to cell phones and PDAs into the company's business. The stock holder does not care about the irrational desires of the IT Department. He/she cares that they efficiently serve the company, and there is no conceivable way that they can do that and only support Windows.

[ArcticStones]

Quote: Originally Posted by tlarkin ...if Apple were used more in enterprise levels and have a larger market share, you would start to see spammers, hackers, spyware, malware, etc start showing up for the mac.

That is a very interesting assertion!
Malware has yet to compromise OSX 5 (or 7) years after its introduction. Yet we can talk about superior OS design and architecture until we’re blue in the face. Increased Mac penetration would definitely up the ante and make such security compromises much, much more likely -- even if I wouldn’t take it as a given.

For a hacker, compromising my company’s network is not particularly interesting. Hacking into Statoil, Kongsberg, Raufoss, Oslo University or Den norske Bank, is. It stands to reason where the efforts will be concentrated.

[cwtnospam]

Quote: Originally Posted by ArcticStones Second: Many companies limit the number of makes and models in their car park for good reasons -- including limiting the expertise required of their mechanics, and to increase the efficiency of similar repairs.

Not here in America. If it isn't a dealership, you'll see signs that read "Foreign and Domestic" at most repair shops. Even many dealerships advertise that they can repair other makes.

[ArcticStones]

.
IT is an in-house shop, not an independent outfit.
My comments must be read in that light.

Here (and I suspect in the US) many companies select a few models and makes for their car park. Especially if they have in-house mechanics.

[cwtnospam]

Quote: Originally Posted by ArcticStones . IT is an in-house shop, not an independent outfit. My comments must be read in that light.

But the "in-house" IT department serves a publicly held corporation. If that department unilaterally chooses to limit its support to one platform but still claim to be an INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Department, then it is lying to the company's stock holders and costing them money.




It just struck me that the argument against incorporating Macs into the enterprise is essentially the same one that scares some individual PC users from switching! The argument that it's easier to deploy images for example is basically the same as the PC user who thinks it's necessary to reinstall the OS every time there's a problem. We see the posts from recent switchers here on this site, and we all know it's rarely necessary with a Mac. I suspect that many of the things that make IT more efficient when fixing Windows problems just aren't needed with Macs, and just like the novice PC user who's afraid of switching, IT blames the Mac for not having those unneeded tools as a rationale for not correcting themselves!

[tlarkin]

Quote: Originally Posted by cwtnospam But the "in-house" IT department serves a publicly held corporation. If that department unilaterally chooses to limit its support to one platform but still claim to be an INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Department, then it is lying to the company's stock holders and costing them money.

Umm, seriously? Are you smoking crack? All the share holders care about is their stocks going up in value, they only want the company to be successful.

Quote: It just struck me that the argument against incorporating Macs into the enterprise is essentially the same one that scares some individual PC users from switching! The argument that it's easier to deploy images for example is basically the same as the PC user who thinks it's necessary to reinstall the OS every time there's a problem. We see the posts from recent switchers here on this site, and we all know it's rarely necessary with a Mac. I suspect that many of the things that make IT more efficient when fixing Windows problems just aren't needed with Macs, and just like the novice PC user who's afraid of switching, IT blames the Mac for not having those unneeded tools as a rationale for not correcting themselves!

I am not telling you I think it is easier, I am telling you it is easier. The PC platform has way too much to offer. Linux, Netware, Citrix, Windows server, etc all work pretty much flawlessly with windows clients. They do not work flawlessly with mac clients. All the comapnies have support for macs, and all of them can technically work with macs but since its not an adopted platform the support is skiddish.

Yes A LOT OF IT HAS TO DO WITH USERS. We have around 8,000 or so PCs running windows XP Pro at my work, and they do not crash and get viruses like you make it sound. This is because we have windows locked down by policy. You can make it secure, and we do. If it was as bad as you are making it out to be you make it sound like every day we have 100s of PCs crash. Out of the small mac population we have as well there are numerous problems, and we have the macs locked down by policy pretty well also.

If users don't have the ability to screw up a system because certain features are locked by policy then its not a huge issue. If you network infrastructure is in place and security is configured properly then there really isn't a huge issue at hand. How many companies have a complete 100% client crash?

What apple does not offer is a robust server side solution for anything. OS X server is chunky and a mediocre product at best. There is a reason why windows servers exist. Apple has nothing to offer like exchange, but there is apparently a third party one that is mentioned in this thread a few posts back. They do not offer any kind of print server solution. Their image deployment system is okay, but it is by far the best I have ever seen and it is limiting. Where as Norton Ghost will work with any and all platforms and it works well. Which is probably why it costs 100k for a site license of that application. Which is why we aren't running it.

cwntnospam your arguments are all stereotypical and clearly show that you are just here to argue. I do not image a computer at the first sign of a problem, no one does. There are ways to fix windows which are built into the OS just like OS X, and they work about the same in my professional experience. The only difference is the Mac platform has diskwarrior which is by far one of the best corruption repair tools I have ever used. There is no blame to be put on MS, novell, Citrix, whomever because their products work, and they work as promised which is why they are used in the enterprise environment. The IT departments are not to blame because they support their users, and their users need those products to do their jobs. Apple is to blame because they are not coming out with any enterprise level solutions, and the only one they have they don't put a lot of work into it. In an enterprise environment people are expected to work on their computers, and there is no enterprise level desktop that is suitable for this. iMacs just don't cut it, no matter how you look at it. iMacs have too many down sides to be considered a decent desktop for an enterprise solution. Apple still needs to come out with a mid tower system. Apple's mass imaging solution is not that great, and it has security issues already because the images have to be owned by the system which means any client can have access to them. It also broadcasts to your whole network, this is where routers and managed switches come into play. So that means any client on that subnet can browse right to the images folders while any client is imaging over the network. They also have no support for AD or eDirectory and this is what almost every company uses. So, why in the hell would any IT department want to go through the nightmare of setting up a huge mac client population in their company/orginization? There is a third party that made a netware client from scratch, but it costs you an additional $150/mac to be able to log on the network.

The bottom line is, it would just cost way too much money to implement macs into any existing enterprise solution, and it would be a support nightmare. The only thing I can see going for apple in this scenario is maybe laptops. Laptops are more personal computers and its more about what the user can do with them since they travel with them. I took my Macbook Pro to the latest microsoft technet road show training last week. I think I was the only person running a mac in the whole road show (like 500+ people there) and I got some looks and some questions. However, I don't need to authenticate on our network with my macbook because its my work computer and it solely functions as a tool for me in the IT department. Since I am one person who supports Macs, I get one.

[cwtnospam]

Seriously, part of the stock going up and the company being successful is an efficiently run IT department. One that doesn't need to waste time and money isolating every single computer from the outside world. You DON'T make Windows secure. What you do is hide it from reality, or as you say, lock the system down. That is expensive to do, expensive and time consuming to (and I DON'T mean for IT, I mean for the departments you're SUPPOSED to support!) maintain, and those expenses pale in comparison to the lost opportunities for innovation and creativity that drive progress. It slows down the very users you're supposed to be supporting!

Maybe you're looking too closely at the trees to see the forest. Look at it this way, if you have 3 platforms: A,B, and C, with A being 80% likely to be the best for any given job, then what is the probability that A will be the best solution for ALL of 50 unique jobs at a company? The answer is 0.0000142725, or approximately 1 chance in 70,065! That mean's that there's essentially ZERO chance that any IT department is doing anywhere near the right thing for a company by limiting access to one platform. Read this next sentence carefully: It just doesn't matter whether or not it's more efficient for IT to have one platform! The goal is not to make IT happy, but to make the company happy, and the way to do that is to use technology more efficiently, not to make IT's control over that technology easier.

You can say whatever you like about me, but as long as you defend an indefensible industry practice, I'll keep pointing it out.

[ArcticStones]

Quote: Originally Posted by cwtnospam Seriously, part of the stock going up and the company being successful is an efficiently run IT department... Read this next sentence carefully: It just doesn't matter whether or not it's more efficient for IT to have one platform!

That is a glaring, logical self-contradiction.

Enough said.

[cwtnospam]

Quote: Originally Posted by ArcticStones That is a glaring, logical self-contradiction.

No, it's not. It's more important that the technology is efficient for the company than have it be efficient for the IT department. By limiting access to one platform, IT makes their job easier at the expense of the company.

[CAlvarez]

Quote: Since most of these companies are publicly traded, any IT department that does this is probably guilty of fraud.

ROFL! That is the funniest, most contrived statement you've ever made about IT and platforms. I got a huge laugh, thanks.

[CAlvarez]

BTW, right now I'm rolling out Macs in a couple of companies despite the fact that they are less efficient for productivity, but since they take me much less time to support, that's what I'm going with.

[cwtnospam]

Quote: Originally Posted by CAlvarez BTW, right now I'm rolling out Macs in a couple of companies despite the fact that they are less efficient for productivity...

Talk about contrived!

[tlarkin]

Quote: Originally Posted by CAlvarez BTW, right now I'm rolling out Macs in a couple of companies despite the fact that they are less efficient for productivity, but since they take me much less time to support, that's what I'm going with.

you rolling out a pure mac solution with OD master OS X server and all? Please let me know how it pans out because I am very curious as to how well it will actually work.

I assume you are rolling out that Kieros(sp?) package (exchange alt.?)

Oh and one more thing, when we budget out of warranty repairs, our apple budget is double or sometimes tripple the amount of the PC side because they are just plain out more expensive to replace hardware on. This fiscal year I have already spent a few thousand dollars repairing a couple of macs out of our out of warranty repair budget.

[CAlvarez]

No, just replacing Windows machines with Mac notebooks. As they migrate to portables, they get Macbooks. It's too much work to support Windows notebooks. They can adapt, or keep the desktops. For some people there has been a bit of a productivity loss, but by using Terminal Server they can always work if they get truly lost, and adapt to Mac OS as they have time. All except one are quite happy with them. One simply could not adapt, but then most of her issues were with adapting to portables (what do you mean I can't access my files on the network when I'm on a plane?).

Kerio has gone into other environments, but not the ones gettting these machines. Those already have Exchange, no reason to change. I've got Kerio in a newly installed Windows-only environment (well, except I'm now putting in Linux machines slowly), already in production and working well. Kerio is now also running the mail for a company I just bought and am integrating into our company (or integrating our company into that, or something like that).

Apple hardware is definitely way more expensive to repair, but there's a lot less that needs fixing in my experience (though my Mac experience is shorter in time than yours).

The new company we bought is as mixed as it can get. Three Macs, several Ubuntu servers, several Debian servers, a CentOS server, VMware running on CentOS to run Windows servers, Debian and Ubuntu workstations... There's one guy with a Windows laptop but he's on his own, self-supporting.

[tlarkin]

cool, glad to know, and I agree with the mac laptops being easy to intergrate into an existing environment considering laptops are generally a bit more person than desktops and they will travel a lot.

Most laptops don't need policy pushed out to them, they just probably need drives mapped. So, really it doesn't matter what users use on their laptops. I know that if someone decides to load linux on their laptop I don't have a problem with it, but I am also not going to support it since its the non standard. If we did support it, it would flood help desk to hell and back, and no one wants that.

Debian servers eh? Man, Debian can be a HUGE pain in the butt with their licensing useage. Shall I mention ice weasel?? LOL Our Linux servers run suse and for the most part I like it, with the exception of the things they have implemented in the new OS and did not document that well. I think I should attend the next webinar so I can get up to date with some of the new things. Ubuntu is cool and all but I never saw what the big deal was, I run kubuntu on my macbook as a vm and I like it, but not sure if it is really that great for me to switch. Apt has so many issues when updating it, or when trying to add more repositories, or an update does go through smoothly and it botches something else. Of course this happens in every distro, so its something I am used to by now. I just loaded Beryl on a desktop at work, man talk about eye candy, that 3D desktop stuff is nuts. Strangely enough, I almost want to say you can justify using it to be more productive, but I haven't come to that conclusion yet.

I still stand by my point that apple does indeed make some of the best laptops out there period, but I still think a PC desktop is just as good as a mac one.

[CAlvarez]

The only policy I use is to keep people from hurting themselves (their computer), so the Macs don't need that. None of my customers need locked-down environments other than the issues with security and Windows. For net access we block things at the router if needed. So the Mac portables are easy. I join them to the domain, then have the user log in and create a mobile profile. This means they can log in anywhere, and in the office they stay in sync with the AD account. The only issue I've run into with this is a user didn't bring in the machine for months, the password on the domain timed out, and he reset it on BOTH the domain and the machine while the machine was not on the network. --kaboom--

Debian has a license? Huh? I've never bothered to look. None of the servers have a GUI, so no weasels or anything else on them. For workstations I nearly always use Ubuntu. I personally don't like Suse or CentOS/Redhat, and the wife...well, she'd sooner kill me than accept being forced to work on those. So she gets to choose the distros for our servers and I'll work on whatever, even RHEL (I call it MS-Linux).

I too think Beryl may enhance productivity. The users sure like it, and it makes giving them Linux so much easier. "How do I get my computer to look like that?" Heh, I'll take care of that...

Quote: but I still think a PC desktop is just as good as a mac one.

We'll see in a few years. I've found that the Windows laptops are a HUGE pain in the butt long term. I've only been doing the MacBooks for a while, so we'll see in a year or two. Right now, I'm finding them a lot easier.

[tlarkin]

Yup I agree, and the only problem I see is that an iMac is not ideal for every situation and giving some users dual xeons is way over kill.

Debian only uses packages (i am pretty sure about this, not 100%) that are published only under the GNU license, meaning anything that anyone puts out that is a great application/utility/etc has to be under that license or Debian doesn't bother to play nice with it. Ice Weasel is actually Debian's port of Firefox, the same exact open source browse recompilied, named changed, and published under the GNU license so Debian will play nice with it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceWeasel

Redhat, I haven't used in a long time. Suse is actually not that bad, there are some things I do not like about it, but I have some hope for Novell. What I don't like about Debian is how one patch can kill a lot of stuff, and when you try to use APT to get it all back installed properly you have to jump through a lot of hoops sometime, but like I said earlier, it happens with every distro.

An interesting package you may want to look at for your clients is called DRBL (diskless remote boot linux) and I have personally set up a small imaging server in our shop to image and deploy windows boxes. I simply get a windows box up to snuff with udpates, apps, novell client, etc then sys prep it, then netboot it into my DRBL box and create a master image of the machine. Then, I can netboot all my clients and unicast/multi-cast all my imaging. It uses clonezilla and NTFS clone, the compression rate of the images is good and the speed is very decent. It basically loads a very small micro kernel of linux (knoppix based i think...) and loads when the client machine PXE boots. Here is the kicker, it loads to a grub menu so you can actually have net installs of OSes on there, imaging options of what you have set up, and the option to boot into the OS incase the user netboots by accident. One feature it also offers is a boot up password. I can lock down all options from netbooting at the client level, but leave the option to boot to the local disk un protected. Unfortuneately, the down side is that the DRBL box has to be your DHCP server, or you have to create a DHCP proxy, and proxy all PXE IP requests out to the box. I have one in our tech shop to image like 20+ laptops at once but I won't be able to deploy it anywhere in our network because we would have to change our infrastructure around. We are tinkering with Zen Imaging now, and the Macs still netboot image via OS X server. It would be nice to have one solution for everything, and Ghost is really the best product I have seen, it is also the most expensive.

DRBL is of course open source and free so it could be something to look at for one of your clients who needs a small imaging solution. It uses distributed hardware (multiple NICs) to lower the load on the server box itself. So, technically you could load it on a DHCP server that was already running Linux and slap a few cheap giga ethernet cards in there and have yourself a very cheap viable solution.

http://drbl.sourceforge.net

[CAlvarez]

Quote: and when you try to use APT to get it all back installed properly you have to jump through a lot of hoops sometime, but like I said earlier, it happens with every distro.

I've heard that a couple times but never experienced it. My experience with Apt is 100% positive, and I love it. This may be due to my use, which is purely for servers where there is never a GUI and no unnecessary stuff loaded. I do the most pure install possible, then run a standard script of Apt-get/installs, and add in the software the server will run. Even kernel patching has gone fine for me. That may be different for workstations that run a lot of apps.

Interesting thoughts on DRBL...I might have just the place to try it.

[ArcticStones]

.
I see a growing number of my clients using a laptop as their primary machine, and in some instances as their only machine.

Q1: What is the rate of change of laptop penetration at the Enterprise Level?
Q2: How large a portion of enterprise users, and in what fields, have laptops as their primary/only computer?
Q3: How is this likely/unlikely to influence Apple’s coming success/penetration at the Enterprise Level?

-- ArcticStones