Enterprise Apple (OR: Don't Blow It)

Ok, here's the deal, I'm an Apple convert. Borderline fanboi.
They do an incredible job at giving consumers an simplistic, intuitive, yet extremely robust user experience. The problem is, as they do this, people want more. And more happens to coincide with the workplace. It used to be that Apple owned the graphics domain, but nowadays they are slipping heavily given that the performance gains of picking a Mac over a Windows or Linux distro are quite relative at this point. 

With the increased love for the Mac Experience at the "common" level, people wan't that same experience at work. The problem is, Apple does not provide a truly viable way of doing this. Yes, you can NetBoot an image of OSX, but you still incur the costs of an entire Client Machine. At $1200 for the cheapest iMac, it starts to look a little impractical. Yes, you could do a Mini, but the costs for that add up quickly too. Apple is very tight-lipped about their future directions, so they could already be making moves for a solution to Apple in the Enterprise (at least I hope so).

This is what I imagine, Apple allows OS X (much like they do [sort of] for OS X Server) to be virtualized on a licensed server (non-apple since they axed the XServe). Something like VMWare Vision or ACE. And you plug a Screen, Apple Keyboard and Mouse into something like the Apple TV. That Apple TV serves as a Thin Client or Dumb Terminal that does nothing but display the output of the desktop environment that is being processed on the server array.

They key is to allow virtualization only in certain environments, you still shouldn't be able to install OS X on non-apple clients, but allow a special case where it can be installed in approved server Desktop Virtualization environments. This would drastically drive the cost of ownership for apple products down in the enterprise. Even if they made a $600 dumb terminal iMac, that would be great. And then also allow their laptops to work as Thin Clients that can checkout the desktop environment to allow users to take work home or off the grid. 

To there is my mini rant and proposed solution. Apple, please, please, don't sit on your laurels for enterprise environments.

Posted via email from Josh Brown