So it turns out, Apple is in the Business business. Who knew? These days, Business is not the first word that comes to mind when you think of Apple. It's more likely to be iPhone, or iPad, or even Mac. Maybe iTunes or Apple Music. But business? Not so much.
A funny thing happened while Apple technology worked its way into all of our lives, starting with the iPod back in October of 2001. The scope creep into the Business marketplace really started when we all started bringing our iPhones into work back in 2007.
And it grew from there. It grew to a $25B business. A couple of months ago, Tim Cook let it slip in USA Today that as of September the Enterprise business had reached that mark, trailing the last 12 months. That's 14% of Apple’s total revenue!
That image above, from the Apple website, brings you to all kinds of pages with examples of Apple technology in business.
I have long been an advocate for Apple getting more serious about the Enterprise. See below, plenty of venting in blog posts past over where Apple could do more. Apparently they have been doing just fine without my advice. The Apple / IBM deal is clearly giving them a solid position in the large business / Enterprise space.
All of this also lines right up with what I hear from xTuple customers and prospects. In the SMB [small- and mid-sized business] space it seems like all the companies we talk to have Macs and iPads and iPhones everywhere.
Apple IS in the Enterprise. They are rocking it in the Enterprise. $25 Billion!
Originally posted at and republished here with permission from Apple Tech in the Enterprise blog.
Wally Tonra
Wally has been with xTuple since 2004 and in ERP sales since the mid-1990s. After all that time selling vendor-centric, proprietary enterprise software, moving to an open source, Mac-friendly ERP package was a natural evolution. Prior to xTuple, Wally spent 10 years at JD Edwards, which was eventually acquired by Peoplesoft, in various sales and sales management positions. He made the move to xTuple before Oracle took over both Peoplesoft and the former JDE. Prior to JD Edwards, Wally held sales positions at ERP software company Daly.commerce (formerly Daly and Wolcott), hardware supplier XL/Datacomp and storage vendor EMC. Wally holds a B.S. from Boston College, where the Mac fanaticism all began.