re roadmap
Being in Enterprise would require a lot of resoureces and openess(product roadmap) that aapl(Jobs) is not willing to do so.
Perhaps I should look into just what quality of roadmap is offered by, say, HP. I would think that with HP scaling back on hardware R&D and choosing software development as a primary differentiating feature (as reported), HP would be largely in the position that its offerings would be "what Intel releases, when Intel releases it" plus I/O and UI features for which the vendor is known (e.g., mouse style, presence/absence of certain ports, etc.). I'm wondering what a hardware vendor would be telling enterprise that enterprise won't get from the suppliers directly, now that hardware variation has decreased to the current level.
I understand enterprise wants to plan, but Apple has been offering XServe for years, XServe went Intel after everything else went Intel, but Apple had warned everyone everything was going Intel a year in advance. What exactly will enterprise want to know other than that Apple will continue to sell and service rack-mounted systems and the operating systems with which they ship and those that ship after? What would be so special that enterprise would want to know ahead of release?
I will be the first to slam Apple as failing to make good on enterprise opportunity presented by its Unix operating system, but I am interested to know why enterprise customers would not slowly adopt Apple technologies anyway as Apple's offerings prove themselves. Apple isn't courting enterprise especially, but what is Apple doing that is driving them off? If the answer is "roadmaps" I'm interested to know what enterprise would do with roadmaps and what they ought to contain.
I hear contradictory things on enterprise: Apple is hopeless, Apple is gaining steadily, Apple isn't on the radar, Apple is being installed as a Unix system, Apple is being installed for desktops by people with Unix needs, nobody is considering Apple ... I'm sure all have their cases and counterexamples, but I'd like to hear something concrete from someone who's seen what did and did not work. Also, some numbers would be nice ....
No question though, that Apple is targeting consumers. The question is whether Apple's growing internal expertise in enterprise issues will be leveraged to initiate some additional high-margin business or not. It'd be a pity to develop the expertise and not capitalize on it as broadly as possible.
Take care,
--Tex.
AI
