Following the publication of my column on Apple and the enterprise this week I got an email with a PDF attachment from “someone” who works at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab [LLNL].The PDF is entitled: “Case Study: What Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has learned about integrating Macs in our Enterprise.” The results line up pretty much with the message I was trying to convey in my column. The biggest message out of this case study has the following headline: “Difficulties for Apple — Apple’s needed ‘confidentiality’ and Corporate It’s need of ‘road-map’ information” The summary report card gives Apple and LLNL the following grades:* Security = A* Integration with Enterprise apps = C * OS 9 to X transition = B* Getting help from Apple = C+The study calls on Apple to have a “Stronger Enterprise focus” and concludes that “die-hard non-Mac users in the IT world slowly coming around to see Macs as an attractive platform.” Obviously security is uppermost in the minds of the folks at LLNL and the LLNL case study notes that “cross-platform applications free organizations from a monolithic OS base that by nature places them at an unacceptably high cybersecurity risk.”Here’s what the study predicts about Microsoft vulnerabilities–* “Continued increased MS vulnerabilities–analysts predict Gov’t & business will in 2006 be unprepared for 30% of exploits, up from 15% in 2003” It leaves as an open question mark whether or not the Microsoft bounty for in-formation leading to perpetrators will do anything to ameliorate the problem.Finally under the heading Difficulties for Apple LLNL lists these:* “Outstanding product with limited market depth due to lingering past perceptions* Complaints of ‘lack of’ enterprise applications and/or native developer tools from mainstream companies like Oracle, BEA, PeopleSoft, SAP and Siebel.” And under Good Actions for Apple to take are these two: * “Develop a working balance between Apple’s needed ‘confidentiality’ and Corporate IT’s need of ‘roadmap’ information* Engage technical staff and users at customers’ Mac technical & user group mtgs”A few background details LLNL has approximately 6,663 Macs, 219 Appleshare, OSX servers, 10,748 Windows systems, 463 NT3, Win2000 servers, and 2,410 Unix/Linux worksta-tions, 316 servers PCs and 4700 Unix workstations. Those numbers reflect a 51% reduction in Macs, a 34% increase in PCs and a 42% decreased Unix base up to 42%. Numbers are between the years 1997 and present. The study was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by LLNL. “The views represented are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the University of California or the United States Government.” Technology Industry