Siolon

Apple Becoming A Viable Enterprise Solution

Fresh on the heels of yesterday’s keynote at the World­wide Devel­oper Con­fer­ence Apple show­cased their new sup­port of Microsoft Exchange 2007 in the pro­duc­tiv­ity apps (Mail, iCal, Address Book) for their forth­com­ing OS release Snow Leop­ard. Apple, not Microsoft, is the only oper­at­ing sys­tem to offer free Exchange sup­port (in Win­dows you have to buy Out­look). They also didn’t slouch on the fea­tures available.

• Sync­ing Notes, Tasks, and mail.
• Fold­ers included in Mail interface.
• Free/busy sup­port in iCal.
• Room book­ing sup­port in iCal.
• Search­ing the GAL from Address Book.
• Includes con­tact groups.

There has always been Microsoft Entourage, but only this year did they beta Entourage con­nect­ing with Exchange 2007 web ser­vices which is the rec­om­mended method over MAPI. Most likely Apple will beat Microsoft in build­ing the first client that con­nects solely through Exchange web ser­vices (which is why 2003 won’t be sup­ported in Snow Leop­ard). On top of that the new iPhone 3GS will also sup­port data encryp­tion which is appar­ently an enter­prise request.

When you add on the fact that both Out­look Live (the suc­ces­sor to Out­look Web Access) and Share­Point 2010 will sup­port browsers other than Inter­net Explorer you now have (almost)  com­plete plat­form inde­pen­dence with your line of busi­ness appli­ca­tions. For every­thing else you can use Boot Camp free in the Mac OS or use VMWare Fusion or Par­al­lels. It is excit­ing to see great tech­nolo­gies such as Exchange, Share­Point, and Apple OS work seam­lessly together.