IT’s Apple problem is not Apple’s problem

At a recent conference, the CIO of a large fast-food chain complained that his company’s IT staff had been talking to Apple last fall and heard nary a hint of Mac OS X Mountain Lion, which Apple announced and dropped into beta in mid-February and will be released this summer. We were all equally surprised — yet informed at the same time. The CIO pointed to this as a prime example of how Apple will never be a fit in the enterprise.

To me, this is a classic example of why IT is increasingly pushed to the sidelines when it comes to user technology and confined to the corporate bowels that run the network, email, and ERP systems. Get a clue: The notion of a three- or five-year technology road map is untenable and unrealistic outside of mainframes, ERP, retirement tracking, and nuclear containment — the systems that need to be static and stable at their cores for decades. Any IT leader expecting such plans from any user-oriented technology provider should be fired.

This CIO should count his blessings that for a mere $200 a year, his whole IT and developer team can get early access to Apple’s OS X betas, which generally grants users six months to learn and understand a new version of Mac OS X. (There’s a similar program for iOS.) Given that the shelf life of Mac OS X is about two years, that’s a realistic heads-up for developers and IT.

Anyhow, what advantage would you get from a three-year plan that indicated OS X Lion was due in summer 2011 and OS X Mountain Lion was due in summer 2012? Apple certainly won’t commit to the specifics that far ahead, though it obviously has a game plan and a goal.

User technology moves too fast for such old-fashioned Soviet-style planning. Also, vendors need to maintain flexibility in the dynamic technology market. IT is losing its grip on corporate technology precisely because it clings to inflexible, slow-moving, overly cautious approaches.

As proof a long-term heads-up to IT is pointless, look at Microsoft: It has offered such plans for Windows, but they’ve mattered not a whit. Microsoft’s plans are necessarily general and noncomittal that far out, and they don’t let IT do meaningful preparation. The three-year plan for Vista didn’t indicate it would be a disaster, and the three-year plan for Windows 8 certainly didn’t indicate the Metro bolt-on or the irrational mess it seems to becoming. It’s true that Microsoft tends to give developers and IT a year’s notice, but its refresh cycle has been in the three- to five-year range on both desktop OSes and server OSes; proportionally it’s on par with Apple.

Google gives no plan and shares zilch with customers until — in some cases — the release date of Android, Google Apps, and the like. Amazon.com is the same, as is any company dealing with cloud-based user technology. They have to be. What they (Apple included) do instead is deprecate technologies they plan on removing; instead of a very early notice that something new is coming, you get early warning that it’s leaving. IT should be grateful for such a policy.

These vendors make a point of using common APIs and standards that allow them to update and add functionality without breaking their own wares. IT needs to learn to do the same. Change happens — a lot.

Ironically, it’s Apple that has done the most to satisfy IT concerns of all the mobile vendors, so this notion that Apple owes IT something special when it comes to the its products seems misplaced. It’s a complaint I hear trotted out every few years, and it smells of someone stuck in the past who just can’t accept that today is different. For a prime example of clueless, Neanderthal IT thinking when it comes to the Mac, the most egregious example I’ve seen in years appeared just this week. It’s a marvel in Stone Age thinking and falsehoods. I’ll be happy to lend this guy my DOS disks.

A better criticism of Apple would be one I’ve also been hearing: The company has hired a slew of enterprise salespeople who are clueless about the enterprise, embarrassing Apple and reconfirming old IT stereotypes about the company that has invaded businesses with the iPad, iPhone, and MacBook Air. Apple shouldn’t be as uninformed about the enterprise as the enterprise is about Apple.

The real issue here is of course control. This CIO thinks he has control over the user technology in his company. He doesn’t — if he ever had it, it’s already gone. By expecting the technology world to slow down for his local needs, he shows he doesn’t get it.

Technology moves fast. IT’s job now is to avoid creating local dependencies on specific versions, so the vast sea of change across the provider landscape has minimal repercussions. In this case, IT needs to follow or get out of the way.

The last thing we need is Apple or any other tech vendor becoming as sclerotic as so many IT organizations have become. The problem is in IT, not at Apple or any other user-oriented tech company.

This article, “IT’s Apple problem is not Apple’s problem,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Smart User blog at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.