I had a bit of a twitter conversation last week with @joetierney about how Mac OS is expensive to support in a corporate environment. Part of the cost lies in the purchase price (and the disadvantages of dealing with a single supplier) but as we all should know by now (but too often forget) the devil is in the ongoing cost of ownership. With the high levels of control that Apple are able to exert through the combined ownership of software and hardware, these ownership costs in a corporate environment become more complicated because, to be blunt, Steve Jobs makes the call as to when you need to spend them.
It is much more difficult to run Mac devices on aged operating systems than it is for PCs, and this then knocks on to other software you need to use as well. For example, Adobe CS3 has stability issues running on the current version of Mac OS, but it is impossible now to buy new Macs that run anything but the latest OS. Therefore, even thoughit's only about three years old, we are having to make substantial investment now in the new Adobe tools.
The launch of the Mac App Store adds a further challenge to traditional IT management approaches. Traditionally an IT department has been all about control. Control of software and hardware; control of data and control of licensing. App store makes buying and installing anything from Angry Birds to Keynote, licensed to the user and bought on credit card.
This is consumerisation of IT at its most extreme yet. And it is worth noting that there is a distinct difference between consumerisation and commoditisation of IT. The latter means cost savings through economies of scale, but the former the exact opposite…
mmitII 