MacNewsWorld Looks At Apple In The Enterprise

A pple is attempting to make bigger inroads into areas currently ruled by Microsoft, Linux, and UNIX, namely enterprise IT. The company has some enterprise-oriented products in its product line, including Xserve and Xserve RAID, Xsan, Xgrid, and others, but the question so far has been whether or not that was enough. MacNewsWorld has rounded up several analysts that say Appleis enterprise offerings are solid, and one who says that Apple might be able to gain market share in this market. From the article Five Steps to Apple Enterprise Success:

IDC server analyst Mark Melenovsky said that, although most Unix-based low-end server deployments involve Linux, Apple has the potential to gain market share in this area with its Xserve.

Melenovsky sees Appleis aggressive pricing and similarity to Linux as a way to counter the popular open source operating system and its relatively low price to deploy.

"The PowerPC chip could be an inhibitor as there is a general perception that the x86 platform is more broad," Melenovsky said. However, he said that Apple could counter this if IBM sees success with its PowerPC server hardware -- which would serve to build recognition of the G5is architecture.

[...]

Melenovsky observed that so-called "high-performance computing" as another area in which Apple can gain traction. Traditionally, such environments were found primarily in academia, science and government.

"Now we are seeing financial services companies needing to analyze portfolios and retail operations automating supply-chain management," Melenovsky said, adding that people working in these areas are examining high-performance clusters as a workable option.

The full article goes on to list 5 steps Apple needs to take to win big in the enterprise market. We recommend it as an interesting read.