Thoughts on OSX in the enterprise?

fogspark

I am still mostly on the edge about getting an OSX box. It seems like I see more technical people starting to use them but enterprise deployments are still windows shops mostly.

I know some companies are letting their employees use mac's, but are any medium or large companies using them for large scale deployments to the masses?

demonfurbie

i think it all boils down to what type of company it is

ii can see a company that deals in photography/web design/graphic arts/music switching to mac clients and windows/Linux servers

in a larger company i bet there graphic arts/web division is running macs

how ever over all i dont think it done often mostly because the non-tech people are use to windows and are often stubborn to learn something new

Daniel333

fogspark wrote: »

I am still mostly on the edge about getting an OSX box.

What's your business need?

Podcasts? Word processing? Network management? Virtualize Windows for Windows Apps? Looking for low malware surface area of attack? Unix like command line utilities? Want interoperability with your old hardware? Easy to use interface? Sounds like you are perfect candidate for... Ubuntu.

fogspark wrote: »

are any medium or large companies using them for large scale deployments to the masses?

Not really. Google uses them a lot.

the_Grinch

I work for an MSP and I can say that most of our clients have no or only 1 Mac. I know with 10.5 and above it has gotten easier to join them to Windows domains. Also, end of this year, Outlook will be available for Mac so we won't have to deal with Entourage or Mac Mail. Personally, having Outlook will probably change the game a bit because a lot of the companies I deal with their users are only surfing the web, using Excel, and using Outlook. Right now I am the Mac guy at work and gettings things up and running takes sometime, but people can do everything they need.

petedude

. . . it's a work in progress, much like we see in terms of Linux adoption in the enterprise.

There are a number of solid products that could provide the bulk of enterprise services on OS X. I know at one point Oracle was selling a DBMS for OS X. I imagine most of the high-profile open-source DBMSs have been ported over. And of course, you have Apache and Samba.

It's partly a problem of education. Most IT shops are not aware of the power and relative low cost of maintenance for a lot of OS X applications, and are simply not even aware of what's available.

The other part of the problem is Apple. Their marketing on the enterprise side is non-existent, and Stevie J. doesn't look like he's going to be interested in revisiting that side of the world any time soon. Looks like he's too busy making money off consumer gagdgets.

jahsoul

It really shouldn't be such a huge learning curve for end users. Steve Jobs essentially made OSX for idiots..lol (he didn't really say that but dang if it wasn't implied...*looking at my Macbook Pro while lol). He just wanted an os that people can just pick up and use and it needed to be shiny. *shrugs*

Now implementation may be another story..

azjag

fogspark wrote: »

I am still mostly on the edge about getting an OSX box. It seems like I see more technical people starting to use them but enterprise deployments are still windows shops mostly.

I know some companies are letting their employees use mac's, but are any medium or large companies using them for large scale deployments to the masses?

Here is a link to Apple's website that lists profiles of business that currently use Mac's in the environment.

Apple - Business - Profiles

Scroll down

it_consultant

The most important thing to make sure of is whether or not your line of business applications support Macs. You don't want to have to ninja together to many things just to support a different operating system.

Try to find out the motivation behind having Macs, most graphic design programs have a PC cousin that work just fine. A lot of artists use Macs because thats what they learned on in college so it is familiar. If it is too much of a pain to integrate Macs, they need to learn the PC versions of the software they use. Software developers will be better suited with Red Hat or SuSe, which is also easier on your budget.

I have tested Outlook for Mac just recently and am happy to report that it is an outstanding product and light years ahead of Entourage 2008. Ultimately you, the IT professional, needs to decide what the best OS is for the company. Remember that the main point of the IT department is to make the company money, not to make people happy.

hypnotoad

Active Directory on Macs = Sucks.
NTFS interoperability on Macs = Sucks.
SMB shares on Macs = Sucks.
Getting a stupid pinwheel stuck on your screen that you have no idea how to even describe to google for troubleshooting = Sucks.