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Most people only ever see the retail side of Apple, either through their physical stores, retail partners or online.  Some will know the inner workings of the retail aspect from having worked at an Apple store or a reseller, as I did.  I’m going to share my experiences of working firstly as a government and corporate sales representative for an Apple reseller, and secondly as a government client of Apple’s Enterprise sales and engineering team.  Bear in mind this is just my perspective, I have no affiliation with Apple, and I’m posting this as an individual, not as a representative of my employer.

The corporate world is still largely dominated by Microsoft and the other top level companies such as Dell, HP, IBM etc.  Apple is primarily a retail focused business, and though these businesses have their presence in this market, it isn’t their main revenue source as it is for Apple.  This is one of the main difficulties corporate customers have in dealing with Apple.  Where Dell etc. give preferential pricing and stock availability to their corporate customers, Apple would rather get as many iPods/iPads/iPhones into the hands of your average Joe customer.  This is not a situation that sits well with most IT managers, and here’s why I think this has come about.

Imagine you’ve been treated like royalty for years by almost everyone you deal with.  They hang on your every word, try to anticipate your next move before you make it, and generally bend over backwards to please you.  While I am overstating it, this roughly describes the typical business relationship for most IT departments and their preferred vendor.  It also applies to Apple and their customers.  Resellers typically exhibit this kind of attitude to their customers as well.

Now imagine you have to deal with someone new, but they can often be seen to put the needs of others before yours.  This is unfortunately how most IT managers have found dealing with Apple.  The company focus is unashamedly on the consumer market,  understandably when you compare their earnings from these two vastly different sectors.  To add insult to injury, your typical corporate customer will buy at most a few Macs for their designers or their in-house developers who are delving into iOS based development.  If it was your business, would you be overly concerned about a customer you may not sell to for another three to four years?  Of course you want to please them, but where is the benefit in treating them any differently than customers of a similar scale?

As a colleague said recently, it’s a matter of perception, and unfortunately perception becomes reality.

I’ve been known to say that Microsoft’s biggest stumbling block is their legacy support habit.  I think this is true of any company as time progresses.  Apple’s legacy is shorter because they’ve taken opportunities to trim it as it presented, like dropping OS 9 support once OS X was mature enough, and dropping PowerPC support (I know this hasn’t fully happened yet as Rosetta is still there, but I expect it to disappear with 10.7).  The real “legacy support” issue for Apple when it comes to corporate customers is the retail market.  Of course Apple have their corporate and government sales teams and engineers, and I have to say they really are excellent, as are the resellers corporate sales teams.  They have to be, because they’re fighting a battle on two fronts.

The first front is the naysayers of the corporate world.  Believe me, selling Macs into the government and corporate market is very tough work.  The perception of Apple that these folks carry with them is generally outdated, and goes as follows;
“Macs are more expensive, can’t run the same programs my users expect, and anyway, they aren’t compatible with our Windows network.  I know, because the last place I worked at had Macs and they were a pain.”  Of course, that was ten years ago, the Macs in question were running OS 9, and the Windows environment was NT4.  The best solution here is to get them using a Mac, preferably on their current network so they can see that Active Directory authentication and accessing files is not an issue.

The second front is Apple Inc.  From a local perspective, Apple’s corporate and reseller channel is distinct from the online store and the Apple stores, as the corporate and reseller channel is locally managed, and the stores are US run.  Availability of stock is controlled by Apple US, so no matter how genuinely the local guys want to help, if they can’t get you the goods from Apple US there’s very little they can do.  This has been the case for years, and as Apple’s popularity has grown, the issue hasn’t improved.

Here’s another anecdote to illustrate the problem;  Apple US controls the developer channel.  If a government agency or even a large business in a non-US  region applies for an enterprise developer license and the US gatekeepers don’t recognise the organisation, they’ll either ignore or deny your application, rather than forward it to the local corporate team for confirmation.  You have to take the application code that gets generated during the application process and take it to your local Apple rep for manual approval.  Again, not ideal and the local guys acknowledge this and try to paint it as positively as they can.

So where to from here?  I know Apple are keen to improve their standing and presence in the corporate marketplace, and I know their products work well and overall can actually cost less to implement and support.  The challenge really comes down to supply and demand, and the willingness of Apple US to see beyond their own borders.  It’s the combination of these two challenges which are the true crux of the matter.