As I wrote in a Security Response blog article earlier this month
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/397u5q>, Apple's core market focus is
primarily on consumers, education, small-office/home-offices (SOHO), and
small to medium businesses (SMB). Nevertheless, Apple does offer a range
of products and services attractive to small- to medium-sized
enterprises (SME) as well as large enterprises.

I can tell you from personal experience that it's hard to get a clear
understanding of the size and dynamics of the Mac enterprise market.
Neither Apple nor analysts have a clear demonstrated understanding of
the market. They largely ignore it, which is unfortunate because
anecdotally, I've been seeing a surprising growth trend in this market
for the last two-odd years.

In some ways it's a chicken-before-the-egg game. Enterprises aren't
integrating the Mac platform robustly because the Mac enterprise tools
just aren't where they need to be yet. (This is not to say that there
aren't any...There are many, many products.) Enterprise hardware and
software manufacturers aren't targeting the market because enterprises
aren't integrating the Mac platform robustly enough.

When it comes to pitching new Mac enterprise products, services and
focus, it's difficult to justify to management with hard numbers without
getting creative and drawing from a large number of sources (hard,
empirical and anecdotal).

If the data were clearer, I think XenSource, EMC/VMWare, Parallels and
many others would know where the enterprise Mac market is at and where
it's going, and thus be able to clearly invest the appropriate amount of
money in porting over more of their products.

...

Just as I was wrapping up this email, I got an email from the Apple
Developer Connection (ADC) that the "IT State of the Union" presentation
at WWDC is now available via iTunes for ADC members...

____________
Todd D. Woodward
Technical Support Engineer
Security Response Researcher
Focus-Apple Moderator
Enterprise Macintosh Products

Symantec Corporation
www.symantec.com
Office: 541-335-7441

"Confidence in a Connected World"

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