Apple enterprise share

Apple has managed to almost quadruple its share of the corporate OS market within a short space of time, says Ben Gray of Forrester Research. The analyst notes that while in January 2007, just 1.2 percent of operating systems recorded in an online client survey were Mac OS X, current figures suggest an adoption rate of 4.5 percent. The figure is more remarkable, says Gray, because Apple does not generally market to the enterprise world and offers little software for it.

Gains in the corporate world are instead attributed to two factors, beginning with virtualization. Using software from VMware and Parallels allows companies to have machines running both Windows and Mac OS X, in case an alternate OS becomes favored or necessary. More recent advancements have given companies the ability to run multiple instances of Leopard Server on a single Mac.

Corporate IT divisions are also, however, said to be increasingly accepting of different hardware and software platforms, on the assumption that people are more productive when using whatever platform they are most comfortable with.

Gray adds that Apple gains may be hurting Microsoft, as the former company's share grew 0.9 percent between October 2007 and June 2008, while use of Windows dropped 0.7 percent. Apple is expected to make yet more gains throughout the next 18 months, particularly due to an anticipated burst of hardware and software migrations.

by MacNN Staff