Apple’ expansion of its power base in the enterprise became readily apparent today at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference:

• According to 9 to 5 Mac Daily, Apple announced at WWDC it sold 26 million copies of Lion in only 9 months.  That is faster adoption than Windows 7.
• It’s apparent the iPad will continue to win on price and business ease of  use. Windows RT is the new Windows 8 variation that will run on Microsoft tablets powered by ARM processors. It is expected to be priced in the $500 to $700 range. That’s the price range for the iPad and $100 higher than the iPad 2. Further, Windows RT will not use Active Directory an Windows Group Policies for management. That means retraining IT or adapting to new tools for managing the devices. For its part, Apple has a wide range of vendors that offer mobile device management tools. IT has learned how to configure the Apple iPad as it has become well established.
•  WWDC featured a growing enterprise developer community. This trend will accelerate as enterprise software companies accelerate development for the iOS. VMware, IBM and Cisco are all companies that have made their software and services available on the iOS platform.

Apple has achieved it success by offering devices that are meant for consumer and business. It’s this consumerization trend that fuels its growth in the market and forces enterprise providers to develop apps for the iPhone and iPad.

It also shows why companies like Google and Apple are gaining so much ground with enterprise customers. People want simple, easy-to-use services. In fact, feature development is really easier to manage in these environments, as every app in many respects is essentially a feature in itself.  IT used to have to wait months or even years for new software upgrades. And that certainly is still the case with Microsoft, as exhibited in the long development cycles of its operating systems.

The WWDC event shows thgat Apple can compete in the enterprise IT market, and do so better than Microsoft, the traditional giant in the space.