Today I had an interesting discussion with professor Stijn Viaene regarding Apple in the enterprise. One of the points he made in the course (Value Added Enterprise IT) was that Apple is inherently not a company serving the enterprise. The issue at the core of his argument was that Apple does not have structures in place to support a large deployment of Macs, iPhones or iPads in a multinational enterprise. I must say – I agree.

Apple launched its business support service called Joint Venture a few weeks back and while it is a step in the right direction it is not enough. The service will provide dedicated support for anyone deploying Apple products on a larger scale with the initial package starting at $499 for 5 systems. The service will provide a dedicated Joint Venture website where customers can manage their interaction with Apple. Companies can order trainings, workshops and request support through the website and Apple will help them get started in one of the its retail stores.

While the service is focused on business it seems to be more oriented on small companies with a limited amount of systems. I am not sure how it would scale with multiple hundreds of systems distributed over geographies – especially in places where Apple does not have direct presence. The service seems to cater to the same customers Apple was always popular with – creative studios, small time publishing, educational institutions and similar organizations. Stijn Viaene also mentioned another interesting point – Apple rarely does things without putting all of its might behind it. This seems like a reluctant move in a direction Apple has rarely wondered.

Apple has always been a consumer focused company and it seems hard for them to enter the Enterprise IT environment. I suspect a part of the reluctance is that the company loves to interact with the end user of their products and does not like to sell to people who govern and not really use its technology and products. Steve Jobs once said about enterprise IT “..the people that make those (IT and purchasing ~ my comment) decisions sometimes are confused” meaning IT people making decisions and choices for equipment may not understand the user as Apple does. This is a fundamental issue of Apple – they do get the consumer or the end user very well – but they have to go through the IT department in the enterprise. Apple does not like middle men.