08-20-2005, 10:07 PM

does Apple offer business solutions like IBM does ? I mean like complete hardware/software solutions for small business, including POS and e-commerece and web-stuff, and office stuff. I just don't see much of this at all, searched around the web, didn't find much. Anybody know if they do this kind of thing. IBM is the top-gun for this aspect of business, but going with Apple would be nice....

08-21-2005, 10:15 AM

Originally Posted by iluvthsgam

does Apple offer business solutions like IBM does ? I mean like complete hardware/software solutions for small business, including POS and e-commerece and web-stuff, and office stuff. I just don't see much of this at all, searched around the web, didn't find much. Anybody know if they do this kind of thing. IBM is the top-gun for this aspect of business, but going with Apple would be nice....

I'm not sure of the entire situation for Apple itself, but I work in an Apple Centre and we do deal with a lot of business/institutional/governmental orders and our technicians are sometimes called in to install everything, network (wired or wireless), and set up the software and so forth. We don't tend to act as business consultants in so far as providing actual software which IBM Consulting does, so any solutions we install tend to be off the shelf, e.g.: installing MS Office 2004 or FileMaker across the network that is installed. It does vary from client to client and I'm not too involved in this side of things; as I'm on the retail side for individual or smaller clients (both general consumers and professionals).

However in one sense, IBM no longer provides the hardware as IBM sold their PC division to Lenovo late last year, and the 'name' IBM on Lenovo's goods, mainly the ThinkPad notebook series is provided on license and IBM's name will be phased out over the years and likely be marketed as just ThinkPad, so in a sense IBM is no longer a hardware company at all, but is likely to point customers Lenovo's way.

Of course, we provide services to all kinds of clients be it film or architecture, and as a solutions provider, we do 'consult' in a certain sense, but we wouldn't be delivering bespoke software solutions ourselves, though it is an interesting concept.

In a certain sense, any business/IT consulting firm could implement using Apple hardware, but it does seem to be 'overlooked' in traditional business firms, and IBM compatible/Windows hardware based solutions seem to be the 'assumed' system to implement on. This isn't the case 100% of the time but almost all the time. However with more and more being done over networks and the internet; and things such as PHP and MySQL being incredibly serious stuff being able to provide the guts for many e-commerce and internet/web based applications/databases and the web being able to deliver such dynamic content these days, there is scope for Apple hardware and OS X to be considered instead of Windows.

I'm not sure I have explained this very well, but I've given it my best shot and hope it makes sense. Essentially, it would be a matter of business understanding that implementing Apple Mac based solutions isn't impossible, that it is viable and doesn't necessarily have to cost a huge fortune if you were to include hardware. Just from a retail perspective; I deal with customers on a daily basis who have never used OS X before, but are more than familiar with Windows and in particular XP, and indeed even some who are up on what's happening with Longhorn/Vista, and they take a look at Tiger and just cannot believe how amazing it is, and how aesthetically (and in many ways technically) is makes Windows NT based OS' like XP and Vista in the future look a little 'weak'. It's about awareness at the end of the day.

Of course, OS X has the BSD Unix credibility behind it too; which acts as a real bonus compared to the days of classic Mac OS.

Hope that sort of gives an idea of what goes on at the Apple Centre I work for here in the UK, and also reels off my thoughts and experiences on the matter :girl:

Vicky :flower:

08-21-2005, 04:41 PM

As lil noted, there are many "independent" consulting and VAR shops that provide varying degrees of business solutions involving Apple products. (For example, POS systems.) There is a directory at

http://consultants.apple.com/ and you can find a local reseller (which might be anything from a simple repair shop to a VAR + Consulting shop at http://www.apple.com/buy/locator/.

lil also noted that IBM isn't much of a hardware company anymore. (They do still build servers and some high-end workstations.) IBM makes the vast majority of its money selling consulting services these days. HP is moving in the same direction. Apple is still very much a hardware company, more like Dell in this regard than IBM. (Though much smaller than either.)