Just a Thought - Apple Enterprise, Please!
by - August 9th, 2004
My job title says I'm a systems analyst, but in reality, I'm just a point man; when something goes wrong I'm the man everyone points at to blame or to make it right. It's not as bad as it sounds; I get to play with a variety of systems, plan networks, and develop infrastructures, and see that it all works. It can be fun, and it definitely can keep you busy.
Back when I started this gig I primarily worked in UNIX, AIX to be exact. Back then we used a virtual file system call the Andrew File System (AFS), and people's desktops were X-Stations; dumb terminals that used X11 to provide the user an interface into the AIX servers. This setup was a systems administrator's dream: AFS let admins manage file systems with ease, the end user never knew, or cared where his data was in the system, to him it was just one big block memory. X-Stations gave end users access to then-powerful severs, each user with his own work space.
If an X-Station died for whatever reason, which happened rarely, the end user simply moved to another station; his files, his entire environment followed him where ever he logged in. There were no viruses or worms to worry about, updates to the OS happened once or twice a year, and uptime -- the time the servers were available for use by the end user -- was measured in months. It was not unheard of to have a system up and running for more than a year between reboots.
Today, I deal with a lot of Windows-based PCs and servers. There are some Linux boxes around, and the occasional Sun or HP server, but Windows is what's on everyone's desktop.
Nearly every morning when I come to work I must wait 10 minutes or more while my PC crunches through all of the security updates, virus scanner updates, patches, fixes, and only God and Bill Gates knows what else that was loaded on my PC during the night. I suppose the folks who manage the desktop updates at work could do these updates over night, but it makes too many people nervous not having some sort of check and balance, even if it only means hitting the enter key when asked if you wish to perform the updates.
The Windows 2000 servers that I manage are quirky devils; they sometimes forgets to update DNS files, which leads to odd happenings in the domain. I've come to recognize the strange goings-on and now know to restart the DNS service on the primary domain controller whenever things get weird.
Everyday I wade through a bit-barrel full of e-mail either generated from, or warning me about, a new virus or worm, which means that my PC will be in for another round of updates, patches, and so on. And as my PC gets patched and re-patched, it gets slower and slower: it now takes me 30-45 seconds to open Mozilla on a 2.6GHZ, 512MB XP PC, Word takes 20 to 30 seconds.
Then there are times when my PC will just take a coffee break; it'll just stop, I can't do anything for up to a minute, then everything will be fine. I've tried to figure out why these breaks occur; virus scanner says there are no viruses present, and nothing seems out of kilter, yet, at random intervals my PC will decide that it has had enough for a while, and it won't respond to keyboard or mouse input, or curses.
It's when my PC is being patched or on a break that I recall the good old days of AIX, AFS, and X-Stations, and when I wish, with every fiber of my being, that Apple would really take enterprise IT more seriously, and attack it like the Marines storming a beach.
Apple is in a very good position at the moment; it has done its homework and has produced some very interesting entry to mid-level IT servers and other products that have gotten many of the Old Guard in the IT world to sit up and take notice. They should, because if Apple can somehow bring its famed Innovation Engine to the IT world it could really upset things, I believe it would be for the better.
I don't think I'll get an argument from anyone when I say that Apple will never unseat the likes of Microsoft and Dell, and install itself as King of the Desktop, It just ain't gonna happen, at least not in a head-on fight. While Apple has great products and services, it is just too far behind in the race to catch up.
But Apple has something that no other company seems to possess, a combination of innovation, inspiration, and guts. It proved that combination could reinvent music distribution and how people listen to music with iTunes, iTunes Music Store, and the iPod. I believe that the now stagnate world of UNIX is ripe for Apple's kind of chutzpah. In fact, enterprise level IT needs an infusion of new ideas, because the current way of doing things just ain't hacking it, if you'll pardon the pun.
What can Apple bring to Enterprise IT that the Old Guard can't?
To be honest, I haven't a clue, but whatever it is it has to be something that promises to get IT managers out of the survival mode they are currently in, then deliver on that promise. Apple must deliver products that make the life of systems administrator easier, like AFS did for me. Apple Enterprise must offer not just fast servers with great user interfaces and great deals on licenses, though that does help; Apple must also offer complete solutions to IT problems, either through Apple branded products or through close cooperation with third party vendors.
And Apple must advertise.
Apple is doing a great job in getting the word out about its products through word of mouth, and anecdotally inspired articles, but that just won't cut it in the IT enterprise world. Apple must sear its name into the minds and hearts of every potential buyer: Put server ads in trade magazines, expand its presence at IT trade conferences and shows, and invest in some TV ads.
Enterprise IT needs a way to do things smarter, better, faster, and cheaper. Windows domains and PC desktops have had their run, it's time for something else. It's time for Apple in the enterprise.
is a writer who currently lives in Orlando, FL. He's been a Mac fan since Atari Computers folded, but has worked with computers of nearly every type for 20 years.
You can send your comments directly to me, or you can also post your comments below.
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Observer Comments
Apple's Mac OS X having the largest installed Unix base today already took care of the first step. Improving upon it seems a logical next step. Where Apple is going with Mac OS X Server is great - easy administration, solid hardware to run it... X11 capability on client machines, etc. The new hardware and software like Xserve, Xserve RAID, Xsan and such are all going in the right direction.
While I don't know that the old glory days of running thin clients, executing environments on a remote server will quite be the same, there does seem to be a resurgence in interest in thin clients these days.
We might just see it happen, and I'm all for it.
I think I've said it before - to sell into the enterprise Apple needs to market a full package - hardware/software yes, but also consultancy, business support and finance. From where I'm sitting they fall apart on the last three of these!
Go to www.ibm.com and then compare with www.apple.com - IBM's website is aiming clearly at the enterprise [they list solutions/support/services and suchlike with equal if not greater emphasis than their hardware/software]. Apple's website by comparison majors on hardware/software - which is typically less than 30% of an enterprise's IT/IS budget.
Even Apple's website ~business~ section is very much geeky - its case-studies are all about mom-N-pop corner stores or one-off fashion-product resellers - to be taken seriously they beed the front of their "business" section to be something like a case-study of a 5,000-seat rollout for GE Capital or a nationwide deployment of Apple technology by CNN. And they need to focus on how it was financed/managed, not what whizzy products they used. CEOs/CFOs don't really care about the stuff that excites propellerheads - they care about the bottom line.
Can anyone name one company that ever became successful, in a big way, in both the enterprise and the consumer markets?
I only ask because I can't think of one. This might not be possible, as much as some people wish it were so.
A famous marketing axiom is "you have to give up something to get something". Sort of a variant on "you can't please everyone all the time." Maybe Apple has to give up in the Enterprise (not in small ways, like making the Xserve, just in big ways as this author is asking for) if it wants to continue to grow in consumer markets as it is.
QuoteGuest wrote:
Can anyone name one company that ever became successful, in a big way, in both the enterprise and the consumer markets?
I only ask because I can't think of one. This might not be possible, as much as some people wish it were so.
A famous marketing axiom is "you have to give up something to get something". Sort of a variant on "you can't please everyone all the time." Maybe Apple has to give up in the Enterprise (not in small ways, like making the Xserve, just in big ways as this author is asking for) if it wants to continue to grow in consumer markets as it is.
Wouldn't Dell qualify?
My personal opinion is that Apple is testing the waters. They don't seem to be gung-ho about getting outside their core customer base, which is the education and media markets. Thus, all their "enterprise" marketing tends to be focused on cluster servers (education) and digital media work/storage (XServe RAID and XSAN).
Another hurdle is developer support from existing enterprise-grade software. If you can't run Microsoft SQL Server on an XServe = negative. If you can't run Citrix Server = negative. And the list goes on.
The only bright spot from that perspective is Oracle finally putting out a product for OS X. That is a step in the right direction.
Where I work, we could use one XServe to handle DHCP and user authentication, as well as file storage. But we'd still need a couple Windows servers because our accounting package and related feeder software are all Windows-only. And I've checked, there are no alternatives we could use that would work with XServe, or Linux for that matter.
Mon Aug 09, 2004 1:40 pm Subject: Apple Reaching Out to Enterprise Customers
Well something is happening in the Enterprise space. I work in the R&D group at a Fortune 500 company (I wish I could work for TMO full time, but that's another story to be told at another time), and probably thanks to that, have a shiny new XServe G5 that they provided to me as part of a "seed" program. As far as I can tell, they just want to get a unit into people's hands to test drive and see if it plays in their environment. They're also trying to seed the XServe RAID; I don't have a direct application for this, but someone else I know is doing a monster database application and needs lots of fast storage.
Maybe this subtle, word of mouth strategy will help them get further into the enterprise. As with most other Apple products, once you get past the bias, and actually use it, most people will allow it into their company.
Mon Aug 09, 2004 1:42 pm Subject: something wrong.
I still maintain there is something wrong with users who spend every day updating their Windows machines, and allowing it to slow down.
I don't get updates from microsoft every day, is the author getting updates that I am not privy to ?
The only real problems I have with my (Windows) machine, are the ones I do to myself through foolishness.
QuoteSWFan wrote:
Another hurdle is developer support from existing enterprise-grade software. If you can't run Microsoft SQL Server on an XServe = negative. If you can't run Citrix Server = negative. And the list goes on.
While I agree with you that software is an issue, I look at it like the Chicken/Egg Conundrum: Software must be available for people to buy, but makers won't develop software unless there's a need. While OS X is the largest UNIX base, it has few servers, and so few server apps. On the bright side, OS X IS UNIX so moving existing UNIX apps to it would be relatively easy. And Apple could offer itself as a no-nosense, highly reliable solution to problems that don't require special software, like security and file serving. In fact, by building a strong file service reputation, Apple would suddenly find itself in every IT server room, I believe. That would break the conundrum and software would start to appear.
Just my thoughts.
Vern Seward
Mon Aug 09, 2004 2:10 pm Subject: Updates,
Quotejonkroupa wrote:
I still maintain there is something wrong with users who spend every day updating their Windows machines, and allowing it to slow down.
I don't get updates from microsoft every day, is the author getting updates that I am not privy to ?
The only real problems I have with my (Windows) machine, are the ones I do to myself through foolishness.
Actually, I have no control over what gets updated on my PC at work, and I have no idea what is getting updated. Ours is a system that uses a software distribution package to keep all desktops updated with whatever the update admins deem necessary. Some days, like today, the updates are few and my PC was only busy for a few minutes, but other days, which seems to be the rule rather than the exception, the update take 5, 10, sometimes 20 minutes to complete.
I do know that the McAfee dat files get constantly updated. Beyond that, I could only guess.
And I agree with you; there's something wrong with a system that must be updated daily, or weekly even. Yet IT managers refuse to budge from Windows because they've got so much invested in it. And we then have another Chicken/Egg conundrum on our hands.
Vern Seward
Apple has hard enough of a time tying to sell to the 4 or 5 percent of out there now. They are always late with hardware delivery. Their build times are very slow. Oh they can make a comuter fast enough. But any corporation that orders 200 PC's at a time would be out of luck. If they went enterprise they couldn't keep up with the volume that the business would demand and consume. The only way they could do this is if Apple would to resurrect Power Computing (they own it now) and let them be a completely enterprise and education factory. PC could be made from the ground up to be Enterprise friendly, Strip out the niceties in the emac lineup and deliver boxes. Let the enterprise IT guys configure them to their liking. My receptionist does not need a superdrive or a CD for that matter. But she does need to drive a huge monitor. We like to keep up appearances. A firewire port, USB 1, And ethernet and a 40 gig hard drive and 256 mgs of RAM and an AGP slot. That's it. No Sound, No on board video. And she doesn't need the latert dual G5 chip. 1.6Ghz would be fine. Let the newly ressurected Power Computing build these machines and they could be Apple's enterprise play. They could do the things Apple would not be willing to do.
Mon Aug 09, 2004 2:34 pm Subject: Re: What would they sell?
QuoteAnonymous wrote:
But any corporation that orders 200 PC's at a time would be out of luck. If they went enterprise they couldn't keep up with the volume that the business would demand and consume.
Well, just like a couple posts ago, this could be argued with the chicken/egg situation. Since Apple doesn't supply to large corporations/businesses/etc, it doesn't have the manufacturing potential to build all these machines for them, but if there was a long-term continuous demand for such productions, then I'm sure they would expand their facilities to be able to meet the demand. Of course, businesses probably won't order from them because they don't have that capacity. It's a tricky thing.
Aren't PCs usually bought in large companies in massive quanities by "coperate buyers"?
These are the same people who purchase, for example, fleet cars. They don't care about the end user, they care about the corporate purchase. Why else do you think they buy fleets of Ford Tauruses and Chevrolet Malibus (it can't be because most people would rather drive a Ford or Chevy when it's not their own money ;->). It's not about ease of use, performance, or even cost of ownership. It's about "give me 10,000 of these things exactly the way I want it and cheap."
That's what Dell is to enterprise customers - Chevy. Why would these buyers consider Apple or the Mac? I don't think they will, unless the product is cheaper than a Dell PC and easier to get the deals they want. That's not likely to happen.
QuoteSWFan wrote:
Another hurdle is developer support from existing enterprise-grade software. If you can't run Microsoft SQL Server on an XServe = negative. If you can't run Citrix Server = negative. And the list goes on.
QuoteVSeward wrote:
...I look at it like the Chicken/Egg Conundrum.
Apple faces a similar situation at the corporate desktop level. The main culprits are Microsoft Access, and Microsoft Visual Basic. Maybe Apple targets their servers at enterprises that buy Apple desktops because they realize that it's a case of "different chicken, same farmer".
Mon Aug 09, 2004 11:56 pm Subject: Apple(Mac) IT Association MITA
I was responsible for bringing in a G5 dual 2GHZ desktop unit running Panther server and unlimited client licences to replace our old Windows NT server. All our clients are running either Windows 98SE or Windows XP.
This was done in an attempt to save money on Microsoft licencing fees and as a security measure. But the problem seems to be in finding qualified *local* IT experts that know how to make the Windows clients and the Mac server work to their full potential. For example; our XP machines suffer from Delayed Write Failure. This means that copying large jobs on our database may take 5 minutes thru an XP machine yet only 15 seconds on a 98 machine.
Sending my IT specialist to Mac Server training would defeat the cost savings reasoning behind the original purchase and it might not yield success in eliminating the XP bottleneck.
What I'd like to see is a website dedicated to the registration of Mac/Windows cross platform professionals. Kind of a MUG for the pros. If it existed ( and if it does, somebody please tell me ) I could track down the nearest specialist and I might be able to bring them in for half a day to work with my IT person and at least get us on the right track.
If anyone reading this would like to recommend such a person to me, here are the vitals:
Location: Near Tallahassee, FL, USA
Contact: bdt@seminoletrusses.com
Tue Aug 10, 2004 2:51 am Subject: Re: Apple(Mac) IT Association MITA
QuoteBrithor52 wrote:
I was responsible for bringing in a G5 dual 2GHZ desktop unit running Panther server and unlimited client licences to replace our old Windows NT server. All our clients are running either Windows 98SE or Windows XP.
This was done in an attempt to save money on Microsoft licencing fees and as a security measure. But the problem seems to be in finding qualified *local* IT experts that know how to make the Windows clients and the Mac server work to their full potential. For example; our XP machines suffer from Delayed Write Failure. This means that copying large jobs on our database may take 5 minutes thru an XP machine yet only 15 seconds on a 98 machine.
Sending my IT specialist to Mac Server training would defeat the cost savings reasoning behind the original purchase and it might not yield success in eliminating the XP bottleneck.
What I'd like to see is a website dedicated to the registration of Mac/Windows cross platform professionals. Kind of a MUG for the pros. If it existed ( and if it does, somebody please tell me ) I could track down the nearest specialist and I might be able to bring them in for half a day to work with my IT person and at least get us on the right track.
If anyone reading this would like to recommend such a person to me, here are the vitals:
Location: Near Tallahassee, FL, USA
Contact: bdt@seminoletrusses.com
I believe you are not the only IT manager with the dilemma of trying to balance cost to need.
My opinion is that your IT guy should already have some UNIX/LINUX training, if he does then he MAY be able to handle the Xserve if he gets some good Xserve books. If he has little or no UNIX/Linux experience then you won't be able to avoid training him. But the bottom line is that training is always a good thing.
You are either going to have to grow your own expert or hire one; either way it will cost you money. Sticking with all Windows will cost you money too, since the yearly license fees can easily exceed the cost of a good technical person. So there is no easy answer.
One thing I can tell you is that you should save money on yearly maintenance on the OS X Xserve over the Windows server
As for your bottleneck problem, I'll ask around. There's a program related to the one I manage that uses a Linux server as a DC, and I believe they have a bunch of XP desktops. There could be several reasons why you are seeing this.
One other thing you might check: If you are using Cisco switches, hard-code them to either 10MB/half-duplex, or 100MB/full duplex, and make sure all of your PCs are set the same way (matched, don't mix 10/half with 100/full if you can help it)). Especially your 2000 and XP PCs. There is a problem with some NIC cards under 2000 and XP where they don't work properly during auto-negotiation. One or 2 PCs on your network that aren't set right can cause one hell of a bottleneck, and drag the whole network down.
Check back here later today. I'll post again with what I've found out.
Finally, I agree with you that there needs to be a place where professional IT folks can go. MACOSXhints is a great resource and may be able to help. http://www.macosxhints.com/
Vern Seward
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