A lex Salkever has penned a new Byte of the Apple column for BusinessWeek, and according to that column, Apple has new opportunity in the IT market. Mr. Salkever says that growing distrust and disgust with Microsoft and its Windows platform -- especially in relation to the recent plague of security holes, patches, and still-effective viruses -- coupled with a shift in the way people use computers today, are offering Apple a new foothold in the corporate world. From the article:
On Sept. 24, a group of seven prominent security researchers released a paper putting the blame for the recent spate of nasty worms and the resulting computer network outages on Microsoft ( MSFT ). As they see it, the fact that Gates & Co. control 95% of the PC operating-system marketplace has created a "monoculture" that shares common vulnerabilities. This threatens to open the door to catastrophic failures of entire organizations when worms spread quickly over the Net. The paper proved controversial enough to get one of the signees fired, even though most of the info-tech world now agrees that monoculture is a serious problem.
One hates to profit from the woes of others, but thatis precisely Appleis ( AAPL ) opening here. No, Iim not talking about consumer switchers. That campaign died an ignominious death after switching turned out to be less enticing than Apple led people to believe. (My wife says the iMac I use is so slow compared to her Dell that she would rather get hit with a switch than make the switch.)
Rather, the opportunity lies in the corporations that long ago stopped paying attention to Macs. Right now, three key trends are leading IT guys to take a second look at Apple. The first is the lure of the cheap and dirty Unix workstation. The second is the rise of laptops. The third, and most potent, is the growing frustration with the Microsoft monoculture and all too common worm attacks that gum up corporate networks. All three factors have long lurked in the background, but now they canit be avoided.
Thereis much more in the full article, and we recommend it as a very entertaining and thoughtful read.