Not Quite a Tipping Point

Apple's buzz could hardly be louder. But have we now reached a time when many large enterprises can consider doing a rip and replace, swapping PCs for Macs? Not likely, says Kay.

Even if a progressive CIO, who felt his or her company had sunk too much money into Windows, wanted to switch wholesale, gaining the initial capital to get the job done, especially as the economy tightens, it could be difficult, he says. "It's hard to see a time when you can change the paradigm that much for computing," Kay says.

For now, the iPhone might just be the starting point, where businesses dip their toes in the Apple pool to see if the enterprise experience improves.

At New York Media (publishers of New York magazine and NYMag.com), Albert C. Lee, director of IT, says he has used Macs for some employees in the organization but has run into problems with service-level agreements. But that's not going to stop him from potentially adding iPhones to the enterprise when it the capability to access e-mail from a Microsoft Exchange server becomes possible in June.

"A good majority of our enterprise users already have an iPhone for a personal communications device," he says. "The idea of empowering a large population of your corporate users with enterprise push e-mail and remote calendar management, especially when they had none before, is pretty attractive."