The Future Is The Cloud

[GrumbleDook]

Yes … the conversation is coming round to the same thing once again. This time it is sparked off by the Apple WorldWide Developers Conference in San Francisco. With all the stuff that has gone on, it is not surprising that Apple would make some changes about how their software interacts with each other, about how they can get a bit more buy-in from their users and how they can make sure they grab back some ideas from other companies.

And true to form, Apple have come up with a number of things, lots of good stuff, but a few things which makes me take a step back and think about how it will hit schools. Of course, this is just a first look at what the offerings are and the fine detail might make a world of difference.

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[Soulfish]

You've just put most of my thoughts on the apple announcements down on paper for me! Being a new build academy with a large number of macs I'm very interested to see just how Apple are planning for IT departments to manage/image/deploy applications and Lion. Our mac purchases will be made around the same time as the Lion release so it's very likely that we'll be running it from the off, but without any indication of the management side it's proving very difficult to plan for. The new Lion server features do look nice, but have Apple forgotten enterprise IT departments again? It's starting to sound very similar to when they discontinued the XServe and said that the Mac Mini/Mac Pro were suitable replacements.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with Lion, iCloud and Apples new release such as Final Cut X.

[SYNACK]

You've just put most of my thoughts on the apple announcements down on paper for me! Being a new build academy with a large number of macs I'm very interested to see just how Apple are planning for IT departments to manage/image/deploy applications and Lion. Our mac purchases will be made around the same time as the Lion release so it's very likely that we'll be running it from the off, but without any indication of the management side it's proving very difficult to plan for. The new Lion server features do look nice, but have Apple forgotten enterprise IT departments again? It's starting to sound very similar to when they discontinued the XServe and said that the Mac Mini/Mac Pro were suitable replacements.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with Lion, iCloud and Apples new release such as Final Cut X.

To be frank this kind of opinion winds me up, Apple flat out say that they are not after the corporate market and are consumer oriented, that they won't really try to make things directly for larger deployments. Why is anyone supprised that there is extra running around involved and why do they make these daft decisions like they are expecting fully supported corporate style features.

What is the disconnect from what they say and what people with larger deployments hear, do you beleive that they are flat out lieing?

[nicklec]

iCloud won't really effect schools, they really need to sort out volume lics for apps etc I guess; 10.7 and iOS 5 look great though.

[Soulfish]

To be frank this kind of opinion winds me up, Apple flat out say that they are not after the corporate market and are consumer oriented, that they won't really try to make things directly for larger deployments. Why is anyone supprised that there is extra running around involved and why do they make these daft decisions like they are expecting fully supported corporate style features.

What is the disconnect from what they say and what people with larger deployments hear, do you beleive that they are flat out lieing?

Where have Apple stated they are not after the corporate market? In the past couple of years Apple have made huge inroads with the iPhone, iPads and Mac computers in the corporate marketplace. At the start of this year they even had a largely talked about mailshot titled "Mac in the Enterprise" (Apple formally declares its enterprise intentions | Mac - InfoWorld). While Steve Jobs has previously expressed his dislike of enterprise business compared to consumer products it doesn't stop the fact that the enterprise is still big business for Apple (Apple Mac enterprise surge proves durable :: HEXUS.channel - Essential IT business intelligence). There's even a whole section of the Apple site dedicated to explaining how great Apple products are for business (Apple - Business).

So when I express my displeasure about Apples disconnect between them saying they're making it easier for everyone with cloud services, and extra features in Lion specifically for managing large estates of Apple products without explaining exactly how these services are meant to work in Enterprise; it's because apple are making it clear they want enterprise business and are here to stay. If Apple removed all enterprise support, discontinued their server feature set, stopped supporting enterprise functionality and purely concentrated on consumer products it'd be a different matter. But they haven't. What winds me up is people believing that Apple are pulling enterprise support, when the reverse is true - they want more enterprise market share not less!

[dayzd]

It's not that people aren't listening to them, it's just that they're feeling left in the lurch by Apple's consumer-based orientation.

Apple did market an enterprise server, did market enterprise RAID solutions, did market distributed computing solutions etc... But now, with their recent focus on consumer only products, where does that leave the people who bought in to these systems? I think that's where the frustration comes from - there's no obvious path from here for many organisations. It feels a lot like enterprise support is slimming down.

[SYNACK]

Ah so they have changed their tune again, they seem to flip back and fourth from corporate dispise to corporate cortship and their actions say someting different again, this whole no downgrades junk without as far as I know a valid site liscence option to simply cover everthing easily. No TPM on many of the macbooks for seamless full disk encryption, who knows where they will go next.

[GrumbleDook]

One thing that also puzzles me is that some folk out there (not specifically on EG) seem to think large scale deployments of Macs is something pretty new and targeted at business. Apple have been doing that for years already, and you just have to look at how they lost their grip on the US education market, stitched up companies who created middleware to manage the kit and have done some strange things with their licensing.

[Roberto]

With this announcement that Lion will be delivered as a download, I do have doubts about how easy it will be to manage and deploy into a managed environment.

Soulfish, you ask...

Where have Apple stated they are not after the corporate market?

... good question.

They've stated no such thing that I can see. If you look at their actions rather than their statements, however, they've been pretty unfriendly to IT departments of late.

I love my ipad, my iphone, my MBP, my mac mini at home and I'm super excited to upgrade them all with the latest stuff when it comes out (though I'm somewhat cynical and incredulous over them making such a fuss about finally being able to make apps go full screen on a mac!), so I guess that makes me a big iFanboy, but I've got grave doubts as to how viable it's going to be to support this stuff in a business environment. No viable server hardware platform and unanswered questions over how you might buy and deploy software and OS in a commercial environment all add up to a platform that isn't very welcoming for IT departments.

[Soulfish]

Soulfish, you ask ... good question.

They've stated no such thing that I can see. If you look at their actions rather than their statements, however, they've been pretty unfriendly to IT departments of late.

I'd fully agree with that one, but what Apple are saying (and advertising!) is different to their actions which is where I get really annoyed with them

[zag]

I would still like to know how I backup the cloud

[SpuffMonkey]

I would still like to know how I backup the cloud

with FOG?

[gshaw]

You could argue that Apple don't need to go for the corporate market, with quite a few companies going down the "buy your own" kit via VDI route all Apple has to do is make something flashy and shiny enough for people to buy it over the equivalent Windows device.

They leave the server side to competitors, save the development money and channel it into iOS and the desktop OS then make massive margins on the hardware!

[zag]

The future of the corporate market is the cloud and a move away from dedicated storage onsite.

Google and Apple understand this.

[elsiegee40]

I've been recommeding cloud as the way forward at my school. With only me part-time running the IT and a limited budget, it makes sense to have many things hosted in the cloud and for our network to become a means of accessing it.