Besides, Smith thinks Mac and Windows have their respective niches among users. "A Mac product is wonderful in many ways when you're using it in a consumer environment because that is what it's really been designed for. And the same can be said for Windows PCs. It is wonderful in many ways in the business environment because that is what it's been designed to do."

And he noted that the Vista operating system is designed to meet the security requirements of an enterprise environment.

There's a low risk of the Mac's enterprise presence growing enough to warrant concern for vendors of Windows-based machines, Smith insisted. "Certainly Hewlett-Packard doesn't see it as a big threat right now in the enterprise corporate space." Instead, the competition will primarily focus on the small business sector, where Smith said Hewlett-Packard has offerings "to counter that balance."

Apple's strategic development manager, Willi Powell, said the company began to observe "an incredible wind shift that gives us a little bit of an edge" in 2001 when it shipped the Mac OS X. "That [wind shift] was people being able to do their Windows stuff on a Mac, and their Mac stuff on a Mac, and doing their Unix stuff on a Mac." With the changing perception of the Mac's capabilities, Smith said users are giving Apple machines a try within the enterprise, beyond the traditional creative departments like marketing.

And although Apple's focus has been primarily consumer, education and SMB, Powell insisted the company does also have a corporate enterprise strategy but wouldn't divulge details.

De facto strategy?

According to Londini, Apple's enterprise strategy is "a device strategy really at the moment" that centers on handheld devices, not Mac desktop machines. That strategy, which he called "de facto" takes advantage of enterprises' willingness to spend money on devices like BlackBerries. And, he said, the iPhone is a worthy competitor in that space. The company has also launched software developer kits to promote device interoperability "to make it possible for IT to say, 'Hey, you've got that device, we can support that.'"

But as for the back-end infrastructure, Londini said businesses of at least 200 employees "tend to find room in the data center for at least one more operating system" besides Windows. In which case, "Apple certainly could have a play there." Apple has the Mac OS 10.5 for servers and other data center offerings like a SAN product for creative field data storage, he said, however, the company's back-end offerings tend to only support the company's primary user base, the creative types.

Apple's server pricing may have dropped from last year, said Londini, but it still isn't competing with mainstream offerings from, say, Dell.

When Apple surveys the landscape of potential customers, according to Shim, the enterprise space is "not as big as one would expect" for the company. Given it already has a hold in the consumer and small business sectors, "they've largely left large enterprises alone," he said.

Besides, said Shim, an enterprise strategy necessitates a significant investment. "You've got to get a sales force together, you've got to develop applications, and you've got to understand the customer."

Thus far, the EDA has released educational materials, including whitepapers, promoting Mac enterprise integration and management, and it will soon offer Web seminars as well. The recently launched Web site has garnered much attention from large enterprises, running the gamut from corporate to education to government, said Lewis.

"The reaction surprised all of us and it seems that the Mac's time has come in the enterprise."