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Hell freezes over: Forrester urges IT to support the Mac

tech.fortune.cnn.com

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Re: Hell freezes over: Forrester urges IT to support the Mac

#71

Post by yardie »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #67
yardie wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. One color laser MFC we recently replaced had a scanner that could only be used over the USB port for Macs but over ethernet for Windows. The workaround we found was scan to email which tended to be more reliable for Mac and Windows. Now we have a new hotrod HP MFC that does everything and supports iOS and Android. It was also 1/3 the price.

Em, parent was talking about printing, not scanning... I have yet to use a printer that OS X Lion can't find a driver for.

The parent was talking about the MF part of a MFC printer being nonexistant for the Mac. Hell any printer with a USB port will work on a Mac. Any $50 printer can do that. But when you spend $200+ on a network MFC most come up short on the Mac side.

Re: Hell freezes over: Forrester urges IT to support the Mac

#72

Post by gaius »

m0nastic wrote: post #23
famousactress wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...seems to be basically capitulating to entitlement Entitlement to use choose your own tools? Gasp. I think the underlying point the article's taking glancing blows at has plenty of merit, they just failed to do it bluntly enough. I think there's likely a high correlation between highly productive employees, and people who could care less about IT bureaucracy. I don't think it has anything to do with Mac users.. it'…

Entitlement that the rules put in place don't apply to you, because you are some sort of prima-donna superstar. I find that worrisome. It can bloom into pretty ugly (and moderately damaging) behavior. I've worked for clients who have certain divisions which are the super-stars. I think the better approach is to evaluate why you have all these policies, and if they are actually doing what you think they're doing. edit…

Even if a small group of them think they can be totally more productive by doing things their own way.

Hence the proliferation of units under the "special forces" banner. How many do they have in the US now, regular SEALs, SEAL team 6, Rangers, Green Berets, Delta Force, Marine Recon, those guys in the boats (SWIK or something), the USAF has like 10 special forces units too.

Productivity trumps protocol, every day.

Re: Hell freezes over: Forrester urges IT to support the Mac

#73

Post by gaius »

quink wrote: post #61
sbierwagen wrote: post #17

It's quite a turnaround for the voice of Windows in the enterprise. If you're not a Forrester subscriber, you can buy the report for $499 here. Four hundred and ninety nine US dollars?

Their business model is a different one. Instead of giving it away for free, and going for a million views and thus ad revenue, they're going for a hundred purchases by Fortune 500 companies. It's the reason there are books out there that cost $4000.

No, they're going for corporate subscriptions (in which case everyone in the company gets access to everything they write), but if you really, really want to read it, you're welcome to pay a punitive fine for not subscribing.

Re: Hell freezes over: Forrester urges IT to support the Mac

#74

Post by rbanffy »

JonWood wrote: post #63
marze wrote: post #16

I've heard in the past one theory for IT departments favoring PCs (besides all of the pro-PC marketing aimed at them) might be that the Macs are very cheap to administer and thus don't require much IT support. I thought this was an interesting response to this news, over at the AppleInsider forums: "I work for one of the largest corporations in the world. Surprisingly, they don't do anything to block access to networ…

> These laptops would cost a normal human about $600, but for some reason my company leases them instead. For some reason the corporate world considers money spent in big blocks to be a different kind of money to that spent over an extended period of time. Unless they have a really good interest rate on their bank accounts I have no idea why, but spending more money in smaller amounts over an extended period is the h…

If you buy a computer, it becomes a company asset and, from an accounting PoV, the money was not "spent". If you lease it (and give it back at the end of the lease) you only had expenses (and, from accounting's PoV, money spent).

Various factors may make one option preferable to the other. Taxes, executive bonuses etc.

If part of the yearly bonus is tied to investing less in infrastructure, an exec may opt for leasing hardware. OTOH, if the bonus is tied to lowering expenses, the exec may consider buying it.

Re: Hell freezes over: Forrester urges IT to support the Mac

#75

Post by Duff »

I work at a large government IT organization. We were way ahead of the curve on this trend -- we did a POC deployment in late 2008.

There are real issues with Mac vs. Windows in an enterprise for many categories of user. We found that some Executives and some knowledge workers LOVED them. All Unix admins and most web-dev types loved them. Why? They weren't using line of business applications, and either didn't have many meetings, or had an admin who handled scheduling on their behalf.

We did not end up deploying Macs more widely, but the POC boxes are still in service. I love my Mac.

Real issues:

1. Apple is unpredictable with respect to patching. Known, material security issues may lay dormant for months with no patching. Apple prefers to rollout lots of fixes at once (ie. instead of a security patch, they roll up to 10.x.y) which often break things. This is a problem if you have to rely on ANY non-Apple software.

2. Apple is unpredictable with respect to product lifecycle. Want to roll out 500 iMacs? You had better pray that they don't arbitrarily cancel or (worse) change your order because they are announcing a new product. When Apple releases a new product, the old product ceases to exist.

3. Identity integration is poor. Integration with LDAP/Kerberos or AD is unreliable and undocumented. Unless you can use tools with a different model for authentication (ie. Dropbox), simple things like filesharing are unreliable. 3rd party tools help, but that creates a new problem. (See point 1)

4. This situation improved when the new MS Office, but Exchange support sucks. Even with Outlook for Mac, calendar functions suck.

5. I don't think that Apple takes security seriously. "Viruses" are becoming increasingly rare, even in the PC world. The types of threats that are out there are different in many ways. People in the Mac community have a really bizarre outlook on security.

6. Apple doesn't give a flying leap about enterprise IT. They know that Microsoft jumps through hoops to keep Bank CIOs happy, and that keeping those folks happy comes with a cost (10 year product cycles, IE6, etc). Apple's ability to tell enterprises to screw off is both an advantage and a disadvantage. If you're a proponent of large-scale adoption of Macs in an IT org, you are taking a big professional risk.

Overall, I think that it's great that people are looking at alternate platforms. But don't pretend that Apple is a silver bullet -- Apple doesn't love you back, and will make you cry.

Re: Hell freezes over: Forrester urges IT to support the Mac

#76

Post by snorkel »

kokey wrote: post #65

I work for one of the biggest corporations in the world, and I can see the acceptance of Macs creeping in. There is at least active support for using Macs as terminals for Windows virtual desktops. That said, it's still a long way to go so it would be nice to see these things speeding up. The quote "For the same reason they wouldn't wear cheap shoes and a bolo tie to meet with Lloyd's of London to insure their cargo…

I also worked for a big corp recently where IT would not issue a Mac to anyone unless they worked in a "creative area". Some of the Intranet tools were strictly IE-only too, as in changing your user agent to IE didn't help you at all.

The silly part of the Windows-only IT policy is that it's intended to simplify IT support when in fact every week IT would broadcast alerts "EMERGENCY: Everybody must stop what you are doing and run this urgent security update!!!" That was a weekly ritual. Not to mention "New version of Office! Please install it!" ... two weeks later "Office update! Please install it" ... and so on.

So glad to be back in a Mac world.

Re: Hell freezes over: Forrester urges IT to support the Mac

#78

Post by johngalt »

yardie wrote: post #62
johngalt wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah so that falls under the umbrella of expectations of IT. E.G. someone brought a machine from home one day and proceeded to work on it, then had a failure and lost "business critical" data. Then management chewed out IT with questions like "How could you allow someone put our data in that situation!!!", "What could you have done to prevent this!"... Hence IT Policy: no personal machines in the building. To anyone el…

And this is why employees hate their IT department. Instead of helping them do their job better they dictate and put up roadblocks so IT guy has an easier job. 1. If business critical data is lost this is your fault because those backups should have been performed regularly, throughout the day. 2. Unknown devices on the network should have automatically been switched to a DMZed network. If they want it on the corpora…

I think we have a tone mismatch here. For instance if a user brought in a Mac the email would be something like "Hey, just saw $newdevice connected to corpLAN. Remember that all company data needs to be saved to a share in order to be properly backed up. Also here's what you'll need to connect to email etc..."

1. Backups are performed regularly on devices I have control over. If someone stores their info on a personal usb flash drive and loses it what should I do?

2. So you're advocating an automatic kill of any unknown devices and then calling me a obstacle? "If they want it to work then they will call me". Does that sound helpful?

3. It's not a complaint, just information. The boss is responsible for that employee and would expect me to know when devices change. If the manager doesn't approve of personal devices that's between you and him. Most bosses don't have a problem.

I'm trying to be helpful towards other IT people with methods I've learned to allow the users to BYOD while still managing expectations. Your response is "this is why everyone hates you! Because you won't do things the way I think you should have!"

Re: Hell freezes over: Forrester urges IT to support the Mac

#79

Post by brk »

ConstantineXVI wrote: post #28
smithian wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, uh, your backup strategy is "buy two computers for every employee?" INteresting, but hardly cost-effective.

Just as effective as leasing $600 machines for $150/mo

Over the course of the 2-year lease, they pay $3600 for a $600 machine (according to the OP).

Let's assume his math is way off. It's a $1000 machine, and it's only $100/mo for 2 years. That is still $2400, 2.4 times the value of the hardware.

I fail to see how the proposed solution could be any LESS cost-effective.

This also is only discussing raw costs of equipment, and not employee downtime. You could likely recover an employees productivity in HOURS instead of DAYS.

Seems like a great solution overall, which is most likely why it would never be implemented.

Re: Hell freezes over: Forrester urges IT to support the Mac

#80

Post by johngalt »

sk5t wrote: post #52
johngalt wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah so that falls under the umbrella of expectations of IT. E.G. someone brought a machine from home one day and proceeded to work on it, then had a failure and lost "business critical" data. Then management chewed out IT with questions like "How could you allow someone put our data in that situation!!!", "What could you have done to prevent this!"... Hence IT Policy: no personal machines in the building. To anyone el…

How do you propose to identify the user associated with an unidentified new MAC? Is there some way that isn't tremendously labor-intensive?

If they are connected to a share already... done. Just let the list of open sessions tell you what username is associated.

Alternatively dump the FDB on the switch. Really easy if you use voip phones with downstream connections to the computer. Then you can lookup which phone MAC is associated and call it.

Depends on your environment but once you find a method. Write a script and tie it to the new MAC alert. So the report would look like. "New device on switch x port 6 given IP y.y.y.y and logged into shares under z."

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