[Fed-Talk] Promoting Apple in the government
[Fed-Talk] Promoting Apple in the government
- Subject: [Fed-Talk] Promoting Apple in the government
- From: Michael Pike <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 12:56:52 -0600
We had our tech conference last month, and Apple had a booth there. Things went very well... Apple does a great job of showing their technology.
I presented about 10-15 times on XSYS technology working with Apple.
I have a few pointers to use when you run in to "the one at every party" when it comes to Apple to win them over.
First, promote the technology in conjunction with the Microsoft side. Get in to the "Nimbda" attack, and the "Blaster Worm". Certainly all of them will remember how much down time they had.
Inform them that the Apple side of things will still run during critical Microsoft outages. Case in point - I had a meeting with the CFO's of our agency (Chief Financial Officers)... when they saw the power of the Apple platform, the MS Office 2004 application, and the reliability factors, THEY came up with the though of "so - if we rolled out a dual platform, half Apple, half Microsoft, when we face a critical outage based on a Microsoft flaw, we can still be up and running, and in essence, collecting money on the Apple side of the house?" Of course, that answer is yes. It's a no brainer for most physicians and financial personnel.
NOW - the IT half is different. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), IT people usually have a higher belief in what they like for various reasons, and often do not look at "how does this benefit everyone". They often look at "what is the coolest technology FOR ME."
I have not had one person EVER dislike Apple hardware. They always drool over the displays, the superior look, even if they dislike Apple for whatever reason.
While we know why Microsoft purchased Connectix VPC, we can use that to our advantage.
With VPC 7 (supposedly) out, you have been given a weapon that cannot be argued with, no matter how diehard the Microsoft fan.
Case in point, I've got a Dual G5 with 23 inch cinema display in my office. Aside from me drooling over it all the time, everyone that sees it has a case of "love at first site".
Of course they see the Apple logo and "oh, well we have Windows".
Currently, I have an XP machine that sits out of site under my desk, and I log in to it with MS remote Desktop, and show them XP running on the G5...
Now, with VPC, you can show the G5, with beautiful display, running XP natively! That eases their fears, and the next thing you know, they are ordering them.
While I think MS hopes that VPC will win Mac users to Windows, I think what it is really doing is allowing Windows users to purchase Apple hardware without fear, and ultimately be won over to the superior OS X platform.
One key thing that Apple did at our tech fair was show off the "terminal interface", and Unix shell. THAT IS IMPORTANT.
Despite my efforts of saying how great OS X is, with it's UNIX backbone, nobody there got it, until they saw Tracy open a terminal window and issue UNIX commands.... now we're ordering them like crazy for the AIX sys admins.
I've pushed Linux technology since 1999 in our agency, this year was the first conference I went in recommending apple to replace all server hardware and OS's. One of the CIO's said to me, "I know what a Linux advocate you were at the last IT conference, Apple must really be something for you to respect it the way you do."
Out of all my years in IT (I started when I was 5, I am 31 now), I have never seen a better, or believed in something more than the OS X and Apple combination.
Mike
-----------
Think twice - be educated - are you SURE you trust your OS?
http://search.us-cert.gov/query.html?st=1&rf=1&charset=iso-8859-1&qt=microsoft+windows
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Fed-talk mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
This email sent to email@hidden