Why Apple is the forbidden fruit of enterprise IT

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The irony of the mystical apple which is the forbidden fruit is not lost on me as I struggle to contemplate Apple and its products within my technology domain.

Apple is certainly in demand from my user base and the passion with which users consume this brand, and insist on it, is bordering on frenzy.

With each new release — however minimal and bland — comes a wave of workers determined to be one of the first to get the device off the shelf and into the office. As consumer tech, while I am not a frenzied fan, I can at least understand the appeal and attraction for iPhones and iPads (although the appeal of the Watch is very much lost on me).

However, what people don't understand and what businesses need to know is that Apple is not business friendly enough - for me at least. It's rules require a 30 percent of any app revenue go to Apple, and in addition, their closed infrastructure and rigid development standards mean that developing applications for its devices is certainly not seamless. When I say applications I mean business-driven professional applications that require harmonized infrastructure to fully operate with behind-the-scenes infrastructure and integration.

It changes its technologies so fast that mature businesses, that have to temper change, can never catch up to really be able to create the killer business app. The product lifecycles are as short as 12 months which causes even more issues with businesses that want to use and develop their technologies in an ever effective way.

I feel businesses are still treated as an afterthought to the development of Apple's products and now more importantly then ever increasing services.

I get it, we are not central to Apple's overall strategy nor - based on its success - do we need to be. However, our user base, who are Apple's customers, don't understand why we can't integrate their devices into an ecosystem of applications to allow them to use their precious devices to work.

This is the disjoint: users then love Apple but hate IT the people who can't make Apple work in the organization. We are blamed but I think Apple has the problem.

 

The Naked CIO is an anonymous technology executive.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/apple-the-forbidden-fruit-in-enterprise-it/?tag=nl.e101&s_cid=e101&ttag=e101&ftag=TRE684d531

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