Winfidels and Apple's punt on the enterprise

First off I just had to use the word, Winfidels, after I came across it in a post today by David Heath. It is such a perfect description for some Windows users whom I have met.

 I enjoyed his post, Ten Reasons why Linux is really a Religion.  I cannot figure out why we did not come up with Winfidels when my team was selling to the the US government.  It might not have made the job any easier, but it would have made for some fun after a tough sales call.

Apple has been called a cult or a religion, but Apple has actually morphed into a very slick high end consumer brand.  My guess is the only thing that can stop Apple, short of Steve leaving, is Apple somehow losing its cool factor.  Going after the enterprise might do that.

At this point I think keeping Apple's coolness is far more important than notebooks milled out of solid aluminum. Even notebooks milled out of solid aluminum might be more of a cool factor than something which actually advances computing.  We will figure that out eventually.

My real topic today has to do with what I read in the post, Letting Apple into the enterprise isn’t easy.

More specifically, I saw this quote by Anthony DeCanti, vice president for technology at Werner Enterprises.

“Two years ago, I would have been fired up and telling you this thing has wheels,” he says. “But I really feel like Apple has taken its eye off the ball for acceptance into the enterprise and put its efforts into the iPhone. From a shareholder’s perspective, maybe that’s a great idea, but from an enterprise standpoint, I really feel let down.”

The quote caught me a little by surprise.  While I never expected Apple to make a large push into the enterprise, I fully expected that their current efforts would remain at least as significant as they were when I left in 2004.

I had heard recently that Apple's enterprise vice president had departed, but I figured that might even eventually be positive.

So I decided to ask around to find out the state of Apple's enterprise organization.  What I wanted to know was whether or not Steve had said something positive to employees about going after the enterprise. We all know nothing remarkable happens at Apple without Steve's interest and support.

As far as I can tell, that has not happened.  The enterprise organization is being changed to fall under John Brandon. The three enterprise guys whom I believe are running the show under Brandon, I will call Curly, Moe, and Larry.  I know two of the three well, and the third one replaced me when I left Apple.

What this indicates to me is that enterprise is still a stealth organization at Apple.  While Curly, Moe, and Larry might be perfectly acceptable enterprise sales people, neither they nor John Brandon are part of the boys' club inner circle at Apple.  No piece of Apple can go very far without an inner circle representative.  It is just not going to happen.

Robert Crinely in his recent post, Why iPod chief Tony Fadell is really leaving, is not far off the mark in describing the way that Apple works.

Jobs can have only so many direct reports. Steve Jobs believes the key to his success is in finding, hiring, retaining, then firing the best talent in the world. He would maintain in the very moment he’s firing Fadell that Tony is better at his job than anyone else on Earth. Yet still Fadell must go and that’s because – ego issues aside – Jobs had to make room in his inner circle for Papermaster.

It might be a chicken and egg question. There may be no enterprise supporters in Steve's inner circle because Steve and the current inner circle have no great love for the enterprise.  Or it may be just the right person has not come along with the ability to champion the enterprise and survive in the inner circle.  That is hard to tell.

Apple measures its business units based on the resources committed to them and the profits they return.  There is no more expensive resource in the computer business than a direct field-based corporate sales person and the support team around them.  You cannot sell to the enterprise without these people.

High level direct sales people who can convince an enterprise to use more than just token Macs are very good sales people and not cheap though much of Apple's sales force is so addicted to the product that they work for much less than they are worth.

So if you are running a company like Apple where you can choose to put resources towards consumer products which almost sell themselves or spend lots of money fighting an entrenched enemy with foot soldiers, what would you do?

At this point in Apple's history, I would keep a token enterprise effort going and mine as much business as possible just like Apple is doing.  As much fun as it would be to defeat the Winfidels, it might just make sense to let them keep having fun with the choice between Vista and XP.

Being successful in the enterprise is an uphill battle for Apple and Macintosh users already in the enterprise.  I am continually reminded of that.  Just the other day, our real estate organization decided we now need user codes for our expensive color copier which was made by Konica/Minolta more than a few years ago.  My Macs had been printing to it without any problem.  Now I am out of luck because their driver does not support user codes in Leopard.

Being the only Mac person in a company with several dozen computers means that the problem is mine.  Fortunately I have a slow but efficient color HP Laserjet in my office.  I will use it for my Mac printing needs.  Anything I need printed in volume, I will convert to a PDF or some other format that works on my Vista laptop which of course has support for the printer codes.

While I personally think Apple could be a great enterprise solution, I am no longer sure it makes business sense for Apple.  Both Tim Cook and Fred Anderson were once enterprise advocates within Apple.  Fred is gone, and Tim is probably too busy or too smart to push the enterprise effort at Apple beyond where it is.

The intellectual battle of convincing CIOs to try Apple products was one the great fun things that I have done in my life.  The arguments for Apple products are still strong, but I can understand Apple not putting more wood behind the ball.

For my earlier thoughts on Apple and the enterprise, check out this post, Lingering regrets from Apple days or read my book, The Pomme Company.

I will retreat to my state of contentment here on North Carolina's coast. That feeling of contentment is one of the reasons that I love living here.

Comments

[David Heath]

thanks for the feedback/link. In the context of my article, the word came easily - googling it suggested I was first (oddly!)

[lucidsystems]

Your printing solution is already deployed. However, if in the future should your company decide to install a new print accounting system, then you may be interested in PrintingWorks; an open source, cross platform print accounting system.

In the mean time, it sounds like you are all set, with the color printer which is in your office for most print jobs.

For all those other jobs, it is a good thing that Apple has great PDF support.

[SLmanDR]

Confusing signals. It seems the Ship (pun intended) is sheet-less let alone rudder-less, navigating the commercial sales market.
But then from your posts I get Apple never made Government and Business sales a priority. Is Steve putting a paddle in the water?
Regards, SL