So Apple are pushing iPad in the Enterprise ...

http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/24/tim-cook-apple-focusing-more-on-ipad-for-enterprise/

So this is where it could get really "interesting" for Microsoft -- Apple are generally regarded as a consumer oriented company and so far have seemed happy to stay that way, with Microsoft safely running the business world.  If Apple target enterprise with the same success they've had in consumer, how much trouble will this cause Microsoft?

I wonder what the Win8 team thought when they heard this?

Herbie

Hopefully they are taking a second look at implementing domain join and gpo on arm devices.

That said i cannot have come as such a great surprise that apple also want to make money in the enterprise

@Dr Herbie: I'm currently doing a small side project for some data that is consumed by an iPad application.

It's for a really really really large fashion company, I'm surrounded by hipsters with their fruit devices.

Head of IT owns a windows phone 7 tho

Indeed. I've seen meetings where everyone of the higher level executives bring their own iPad (not sure whether all are latest version, but possibly) to the meeting, and agenda in paper form is not used.

So the invasion has been started even before Apple officially pushing it.

I think there's a difference between using an off-the-shelf iPad as a paper replacement, and a 'push' from Apple, which presumably means software created for that environment -- this could be just the toehold that Apple needs to start selling iPad-specific enterprise software and services that could encroach on Microsoft's traditional market.

If the head of HR want's to use an iPad for core business and Apple provide a suitable enterprise service to run on an Apple server, then IT will have to buy and maintain that Apple server and Apple have made an in-road into that business.

I only hope I'm never forced into learning Objective-C! 

Herbie

I've said for awhile now that Microsoft needed to get a tablet out sooner than later (i.e. using WP7 instead of W8) because the enterprise wasn't going to sit around and wait. iPads and other tablets would trickle in and enterprise customers would start finding ways to use them. I'm sure we've all seen plenty of example of restaurants, concierges, and small mom & pop businesses using iPhones, iPods, and tablets for POS and hospitality, etc. My Android app customers are small to mid-size businesses. It was only a matter of time before enterprises got past the IT naysayers and starting using them to solve problems. None of this should come to any surprise to Microsoft and the W8 team if a nit-wit like me could see this coming. At this point I think they can only hope their bet on W8 pays off because it's way too late to change strategies now unless that new strategy is a game changer like the original iPhone (and I just don't think Microsoft has that in them).

Sincerely hope that this hasn't come as a surprise to anyone at Microsoft.   Apple probably recognize that they have a very small window of opportunity just now.   If they really had their act together they would have made this push soon after iPad 2 but I guess they had their hands full!

There have been loads of programmes showing coffee shops users for example using it as a billing machine, with the amount of money going into Apple, they can afford to equal or exceed Microsoft in terms of expenditure for creating tools like Visual Studio.

Don't think for a minute that writing objective C is to remain less productive than C#

@vesuvius: Just a personal objection to Objective-C syntax rather than a comment on productivity; it feels like a step backward in time rather than the step forward I would prefer.

Herbie

48 minutes ago, Dr Herbie wrote

I only hope I'm never forced into learning Objective-C! 

If all else fails, there's always MonoTouch...

4 hours ago, vesuvius wrote

There have been loads of programmes showing coffee shops users for example using it as a billing machine, with the amount of money going into Apple, they can afford to equal or exceed Microsoft in terms of expenditure for creating tools like Visual Studio.

Don't think for a minute that writing objective C is to remain less productive than C#

Well, they'll need to if they're serious. I did read that Apple had a few chaps working on binding Ruby to Cocoa. 

Interesting. Though previous dealings with Apples "Enterprise" products is that they're about as hopeless as understanding what enterprises need as Microsoft is when it comes to consumer IT. Will be interesting whether there is much substance to the push, or whether it'll just be a case of ads with a "iPads a great for business people too" message.

@AndyC: I think the difference this time around is that business are already using iDevices in the enterprise and Apple is going to make that even easier. The iDevices don't compete directly with PC so their not currently looked at as an either/or choice; they are special purpose. Ultimately Apple sneaks in the enterprise by showing that these "special purpose" implementation negates the need for a PC in many jobs. That's a far cry from Apple pushing enterprise servers.

@Ray7:

MacRuby

It's one of the fastest Ruby implementations as well. And yeah it's an official Apple project. Apple is very serious about making Ruby a first class language for client development, with IDE support and all.

1 hour ago, DeathByVisualStudio wrote

@AndyC: I think the difference this time around is that business are already using iDevices in the enterprise and Apple is going to make that even easier. The iDevices don't compete directly with PC so their not currently looked at as an either/or choice; they are special purpose. Ultimately Apple sneaks in the enterprise by showing that these "special purpose" implementation negates the need for a PC in many jobs. That's a far cry from Apple pushing enterprise servers.

There's a thought -- pushing iPad as just the client side. A large part of the enterprise is rattling off bespoke solutions. If Apple just launched some dev tools/libraries that improved (from a devs point of view) the consumption of enterprise data sources then they could easily get traction.

Herbie

Good news is, Apple will become unhip.

Bad news is, it will compete with unhip Microsoft directly.

Microsoft is certainly not helping developers making enterprise applications for Metro. The System.Data namespace (which allows us to connect to databases) is pretty much non existent.

24 minutes ago, ZippyV wrote

Microsoft is certainly not helping developers making enterprise applications for Metro. The System.Data namespace (which allows us to connect to databases) is pretty much non existent.

Metro is pretty much a work in progress. It's going to be just like when Windows Phone was released. They're going to play it off like stuff was omitted due to security concerns when in reality, it's just plain half-baked as an application stack.