If the results of Yankee Group’s survey a few days ago was any indication, Macs are slowly, but surely, making their way into big business. So, as a way to hep make this transition move faster and smoother, a group of Mac-focused companies have formed together to make the Enterprise Desktop Alliance (EDA), with the purpose of The group, whose founding members include Atempo, Centrify, Group Logic, LANrev, and Parallels, plan on hosting a series of events, webcasts, and seminars, in addition to providing various paper resources, on how to incorporate Macs into a Windows-run IT system.
While this may seem like a very difficult task to undertake, it can’t be denied that Macs are becoming more appealing in Enterprise. So, with any luck, you may begin to find that corporations around the world will begin to run on Xserve’s Macs, and even iPhones.
"it can't be denied that Macs are becoming more appealing in Enterprise."
I assure you that it can. If you already have an installed Windows network, why on earth would you install Mac clients? I'd love to see the Mac do well in the corporate environment, but the fact of the matter is that it doesn't play well with an existing Windows network unless all you need to do is authenticate against an Active Directory, and even that is problematic, apparently. Until Apple produces something that can replace the Windows platform, or develops application/services that are 100% compatible with the various Windows applications/services that enterprises depend on, then the Mac will NEVER be anything more than a curiosity in business unless the business is suitably small.
Microsoft recently dumped a ton of documentation on its file formats and application interfaces for the likes of SharePoint, so perhaps compatibility can be achieved. However, this is going to take time and in the meantime we could all use a dose of the sanity pill.
Sorry to be a killjoy, but there's a reason why I'm running XP under VMWare rather than using OS X for everything, and that's simply because the Mac is not 100% compatible.