The Apple Double Play.

I just finished reading an article in PC Magazine that really got me thinking.

The piece was entitled ‘The Apple Product That Really Worries PC Vendors’.

It really got me thinking, especially in light of the fact that the Commonwealth Bank recently decided to arm their staff with MacBook Air laptops.

The interesting this about this was the following:

Branch visitors were free to use iMac, iPad, iPod and Asus touchscreen devices to browse foreign exchange rates, products, and to make appointments with CBA specialists – much like how Apple customers arranged to visit the vendor’s ‘Genius bar’.
The bank also planned to replace internal Dell desktops with MacBook Air notebooks nationwide, allowing employees to choose to operate on either Mac OS or Windows platforms.

Wow! I really mean WOW!

Think about this in terms of the the information from Canalys that I mentioned in this post ‘Wintel Market Share Slips’.

The Commonwealth Bank, the guys who hung on to OS/2 for years past its expiry date are doing a widespread deployment of Apple MacBook Air laptops. This is astounding news.

Here’s the really amazing potential - lets assume that they replace all 4000 Dell laptops with the MacBook Air. Here’s the really interesting maths:

4000 copies of Windows 7 Entreprise, even at the best possible price couldn’t be less that $175 a copy, lets call it $150 just to keep the calculations simple. Lion is $31.99.

That means a saving on OS upgrade costs of $472,040.

Half a Million Dollars saving on an Operating System upgrade!

Where would you want the half million, on your bottom line or on Microsoft’s?

Careful of your answer, your shareholders are watching.

There's no inevitability as long as there's a willingness to think

I was back in Brisbane. My third trip, and, sadly, things weren’t improving.

The Financial Controller was still meddling in technology stuff and the IT guys were watching their jobs and their employer get flushed down the sewer by this stupid bean counter.

It was a recipe for disaster.

I actually felt sorry for the owners of the business. It was a family run operation and the board was made up of three family members, the Financial Controller and a friend of the family who was reasonably successful in his own right.

They were really clueless about technology and had trusted the Financial Controller. They got taken for a ride by someone who should have stuck to what they were good at rather than getting involved in something that they were hopelessly ill equipped to deal with.

The final straw for me was the cost of conversion moving to a complete Windows monoculture was massive.

While the Financial Controller was busy explaining to everyone that there were huge benefits from using Windows. George and his crew were seeing budgetary estimates rise quickly.

The root problem was the demand to go to a Windows monoculture. Had they stayed with the mixed environment they had, upgraded their Windows XP devices to Windows 7 as well as spend some money on addressing the few shortfalls they had in the environment they would be spending around $55,000.

Taking everything out and replacing it with Windows from start to finish was going to cost the company in excess of $425,000 - and here’s the thing - after spending all this money they’d have exactly the same capabilities that they had with their old environment.

That’s right. No net change in capabilities or functionality. A lot of money gets spent and nothing changes.

Now there’s a real strategy for success.

I was invited to a board meeting by the Financial Controller to provide my opinions regarding the migration.

This was going to be an interesting board meeting.