Am I insane to put Apple in the enterprise?

Do you ever just call up a customer and ask them questions about what would make them happy? Well, I did. I had been toying with the idea of beta testing a [tag]Mac[/tag] in our business to see where it would fit, but I couldn’t really decide where to put it.

I called one of our account managers about some problems with his [tag]mobile device[/tag] and the fact that he hated the [tag]BlackBerry[/tag]. One thing led to another, and he asked if we might ever consider putting a Mac in our environment. The light bulb went off.

I am a little on the tortured side, I admit. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m the kind of guy who is never satisfied with status quo. Don’t get me wrong, I like stability (because the keeps me in a job), but I really like looking towards the horizon and bringing innovations to the business to make my customers happy.

I wouldn’t classify my style of innovation ‘bleeding edge’, but it might be characterized as ‘the bludgeoned edge’. I have had my fair share of beatings on selecting a products that were in the growth phase, but I have also found that it is often the best way to be influential over the development of a product as well.

A whole slew of questions sprinted through my head, but a technically savvy sales rep might be just the personality disposition I actually need to give honest feedback and a real-world test – not some IT lab.

So, am I insane? Apple isn’t fully ready yet for the [tag]enterprise[/tag], and third party line of business applications are quite sparse… So BootCamp with Vista becomes a fall back, but is that really an Apple solution? Now I’m just hosting different types of hardware that might not fall under my standard maintenance plan creating exceptions that could cause additional helpdesk calls.

On the other hand, is there any validity to the fact that Macs need less support? I still find that hard to believe, but that’s what I hear at least.

I’m still struggling on the answer to this question, and I would really love some help from [tag]Apple[/tag] on enterprise standardization tools. In this case, my choice seems to be between innovation or stability…

That’s a tough choice for me, and one that might likely drive me insane…