If you've been miffed with Microsoft since Excel 2008 hit the stores due to the removal of Solver from the popular spreadsheet application, it may be time to lighten up. You can now download Solver for Excel 2008 for free from the FrontLine Systems Web site. FrontLine developed the original Solver for Excel 2004, and developed the Excel 2008 version at the request of the Microsoft Mac Business Unit (Mac BU).
Solver is a linear programming / analysis tool for Excel that was included with Excel 2004 as an add-in, but dropped from Excel 2008 since it required Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). The Mac BU has noted that VBA is going to return in the next version of Office. In the meantime, Mac Excel users who rely on Solver's powerful analysis capabilities are now able to use the free download to perform their linear programming tasks.
Ben Gray, analyst at Forrester Research, says that Mac OS X accounts for 4.5 percent of the business operating system market, 3¾ times their share in January 2007.
Computerworld notes that all this has happened with one thing notably absent: an enterprise strategy. "I haven't seen anything from Apple that seems to show it's attack[ing] the enterprise market," Gray said.
He says the gains in market share are due to two trends: client virtualization (using software like Parallels or VMWare) and the idea that corporate IT departments are more willing to support a broader range of hardware and software.
"In the end, [IT departments] want their employees to be as productive as humanly possible, so they'll approve tools that people are more comfortable with," said Gray.
In related news, Windows' overall share of the corporate market dipped slightly from 95.6 to 94.9 percent for the same time period.
Yesterday we posted a tip about using your iPhone on a cruise ship, but what about if you want to use a Mac on a ship or in a hotel and you don't have a MacBook to take along with you?
AppleInsider's Prince McLean is reporting that installations of Macs in hotels and on cruise ships are going strong, with thousands of Apple machines being sold for installation in those locations by Apple's Enterprise Sales Group. Back in June we mentioned the Fontainebleau's plans in Vegas -- they're also installing another 1,400 24" iMacs in rooms at the flagship resort in Miami Beach.
Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines has Mac minis installed on its Freedom Class (3,600 passenger) ships, and is working with Apple on IT infrastructure for its upcoming Oasis Class (5,400 passenger) liners. The deployments planned will have up to 16,150 Ethernet drops per ship, racks full of Xserves, and thousands of client Macs.
Whether it's an in-room email and information kiosk, a public information center, or an intelligent set-top box, the Mac is definitely making inroads into the hospitality and travel industry.
If you're the CIO for the ANZAC division of a big bank -- I mean, a really big, global bank -- and you happen to let slip to a ZDnet reporter that your company is considering the iPhone as a possible BlackBerry replacement across the board... well, 200,000 iPhones is enough to get everyone's attention, even though this is about as far from an actual commitment to purchase as I am from New Zealand right now (17 time zones or so).
ZDnet.com.au is reporting that Brenton Hush, the chief information officer for HSBC in Australia and New Zealand, confirms that the bank is "reviewing iPhones from a HSBC group perspective.... I mean, globally." Even if a decision whether to move off the BlackBerry platform and onto the iPhone for mobile users is months or years away, the fact that the conversation is taking place on a more than cursory level is very good news for Apple's efforts to woo the enterprise with Exchange integration on the phone. Now, about that MobileMe situation...
Good news for IBM Lotus users, Big Blue will bring an iPhone-compatible version of its Lotus Domino Web Access suite to the App Store later this year. The software, dubbed "Lotus iNotes," will allow businesses that utilize Lotus Domino Server to provide their users access to contacts, e-mail and calendars.
No firm release date has been set, though screenshots (which are not final and subject to change) and tentative information is available at IBM's Lotus Domino Web Access site.
Lotus iNotes is just one of the new mobile strategies IBM will be deploying in the coming months, as it looks to stave off competition from Microsoft.
And while Lotus might not be the sexiest collaboration software around, it is used by millions upon millions of people worldwide. IBM's support of the iPhone could really propel corporations to adopt, or at least consider supporting, the iPhone in IT environments.
Egnyte, another entry in the list of "cloud storage" applications, has updated to version 1.5 with some valuable new features. Geared toward organizations and businesses needing centralized document storage, it provides a cross-platform solution for uploading, storing, sharing and collaborating on files. The latest version of Egnyte features:
Shared and private folders
File versioning
A tagging system for non-hierarchical file organization
Readily-available previews of compatible image formats
Folder export with zip archiving/compression
WebDAV support and an accompanying Mac desktop application
Continuous backup of local files
Cross-platform compatibility
Per-folder access control
Egnyte 1.5 has become a viable FTP replacement for medium to large organizations with multiple, project-specific FTP repositories. A new drag and drop interface allows any user to upload multiple files of any size, and provides in-memory compression for faster transfers. A "Hot Sharing" feature quickly generates public URLs for hosted files, allowing easy collaboration with users outside of your Egnyte account without requiring a login.
Pricing begins at $15/month per "Power User" (administrative users) and includes unlimited access for "Standard Users" (everybody else). Standard Users don't get the desktop access (WebDAV) or its related ability to automatically back up local files to the Egnyte server; add $15/mo for each user who will require those capabilities. Special pricing is available for non-profits and academic institutions. See the Egnyte homepage for more information.
The new beta adds a TON of new features, as the video above demonstrates. I got a chance to talk to VMWare today about the new beta and it is HOT. I'll be posting a more in-depth overview tomorrow, but until then, here are some of the highlights:
Unity 2.0 - The newest version of Fusion is really focused on better Windows-Mac integration. You can now launch Windows programs from the dock or access Mac programs from within your virtual machine. You can also link folders like Documents, Pictures and Music on your virtual machine with those folders on your Mac.
Multiple Snapshots VMWare has worked really hard to bring a Time Machine-like ease to backing up and protecting your virtual machine. You can now designate how often you want to take full system snapshots of your VM, whether once an hour, once a day or once a week, and how many copies you want to keep.
Better Video and Graphics Graphics and shading support has been improved for Macs that have higher-end graphics cards, and even integrated Macs can now play 1080p HD video in virtual machines with considerably less CPU overhead.
Support for more client OSs, including Leopard Server You can now run Leopard Server as a VM in OS X 10.4 and 10.5, even on client machines (virtualizing Mac OS X client is blocked by Apple's license terms). Support for the latest version of Ubuntu (Hardy Heron) is also available right out of the box with Unity integration. Power users can now designate up to four virtual CPUs per virtual machine, which is great for anyone wanting to take an XServe or Mac Pro to the next level.
VMWare Fusion 2.0 beta 2 is available for Intel Macs running OS X 10.4 or OS X 10.5. New users can try the beta for free and the upgrade path (including future betas and the full version of Fusion 2.0) is free for all existing Fusion 1.0 customers.
When I saw the words Provue Development and Panorama in a press release this morning, I felt like I was suddenly transported back to the 80s. When the Mac first came out in 1984, Provue was there with the first real database manager for the Mac (OverVue). It's great to see that they're still developing innovative products like Panorama Enterprise Server. The $399 Panorama Enterprise Server is a RAM-based database server for Mac OS X 10.4 and above.
Panorama Enterprise Server works with Provue's desktop database application Panorama 5.5 to create network-based databases. It distributes RAM-based copies of shared data across a network in a mesh architecture. By distributing the load of common database actions over a number of machines, speed is improved dramatically.
Another unique feature is that users can disconnect from the network, work offline, and their database changes sync back up to the rest of the meshed computers when they are reconnected. Panorama Enterprise Server has remote configuration, management, and debug tools to keep DBAs happy, as well as automatic backup of live databases. Designers will like the visual design tools for building HTML and CSS-based forms, and support for Google Analytics.
Provue offers a 45-day free trial of both Panorama 5.5 and Enterprise Server.
Don't be shocked, but here's some non-iPhone news!
Marware's project management application for Mac OS X, Project X, has received a feature and bug fix update. Project X version 1.5 requires Leopard and offers a pile of enhancements over previous versions:
New flexible licensing system
60% speed improvement
A duplicate command for duplicating tasks, milestones, resources, etc...
Resources are dispersed to all child tasks when you drag and drop resources on subprojects.
New project templates for Law, Marketing, Software, and more
As a former Project Manager for a large multinational corporation, I can see where this application would have limitations for large projects. However, it is a great way for smaller workgroups who use Macs to set up and track their projects. I'm impressed with the way that Project X integrates iCal, Mail, and web sharing.
Project X version 1.5 is a free update to current owners of the application. There's a free demo available for download, or you can purchase Project X for $199.95 online or from a number of Apple Stores. If you're new to the profession of project management, be sure to visit Marware's online training page for tutorials and links to PM sites.
To web developers, scripting is the glue that connects web pages and back-end systems. For example, PHP is a very popular scripting environment that has been used to write web apps like WordPress and phpBB. For those of you who use PHP, you know that it is a dynamic, weakly-typed hypertext preprocessor. In other words, it's a scripting language that is embedded in the HTML code that makes up a web page.
Inspiring Applications, Inc. hopes to catch the imagination of web developers with Yuma, their new strongly-typed, object-oriented scripting tool that is being released today. Rather than the confusing syntax of PHP, Yuma uses a simple REALBasic-like syntax. It is natively compiled to machine code on Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows for high speed.
Yuma Development Server for Mac OS X is available as a free download, complete with example code, a full developer reference, language definition files for BBEdit, TextMate and Text Wrangler, and more. When you're ready to deploy your Yuma web app, you can purchase and install Yuma Enterprise Server ($149). It's a command-line app and may be set up as a daemon.
To run either Yuma Development or Enterprise Server on Mac OS X, you need to be running OS X 10.3 or later on a G4, G5, or Intel-based Mac with at least 1 GB of RAM.
If you're a Mac geek who wants to make a living troubleshooting Macs, these are the certifications to get because they are your ticket to becoming a member of the Apple Consultants Network (ACN). ACNs can build a relationship with their local Apple store and get references for work that can't be performed by Genius Bar techs, and they're listed on the Apple Consultants Network website. The rest of this article is after the break.
TUAW blogger Steve Sande is an Apple Certified Technical Coordinator and volunteers as the South Central US Regional Champion for the Apple Consultants Network.
Axel Springer AG, Germany's largest newspaper publisher, is moving its entire organization -- 12,000 computers -- to the Mac platform. Axel Springer will become Apple's largest corporate customer in Europe, and second largest customer worldwide. (Google is number one.)
Axel Springer owns Bild and Bild am Sonntag, tabloid-style dailies (not unlike The Sun in the UK or the New York Post in the U.S.) and several magazines sold under the Bild brand. The company currently uses large-scale publishing solutions from WoodWing Software and CCI, both of which support Mac clients.
In a video message to employees, CEO Matthias Döpfner cited ease-of-use, appearance, and total cost of ownership in the reason to switch. Employees can start buying and using Macs and iPhones this month, though the entire organization will be migrated over the course of a year or two five years. (Hey, I took French in high school.)
Thanks Alex, Rouven, and bimbum for the tip (and the help with the German)!
Five companies, Atempo, Centrify, GroupLogic, LANrev, and Parallels have joined forces to form the Enterprise Desktop Alliance, which will promote the deployment of Macs in the enterprise. All of the companies focus on integrating Mac OS X with Windows and PC-based network infrastructures.
Peter Frankl, chief operating officer at LANrev, says it wants IT departments to know they can successfully integrate Mac solutions for their large businesses.
For now, the consortium offers little more than product information about each member company's software, but Frankl says the organization wants to create a resource for IT pros to share best practices.
MacEnterprise.org is a well-known community of IT professionals with similar goals, but without the financial clout of the five-company consortium. The organization has not yet responded to a request for comment.
4SmartPhone is getting ready to launch 4iPhone, a hosted Microsoft Exchange server for small businesses and individuals. It basically offers access to the Exchange based Enterprise features of the 3G iPhone including ActiveSync and DirectPush of email, contacts, etc. to users who don't have an Exchange server. 4SmartPhone already offers this for Symbian and Windows Mobile devices for $11-$16 a month and pre-registration for 4iPhone is available now, though prices have not been announced.
Frankly, I suspect most individuals would be better off just using Apple's forthcoming MobileMe service. But for small businesses who want to equip their employees with iPhones, but don't want to incur the upfront expense of running an Exchange Server themselves, something like 4iPhone is probably worth a look.
Computerworld is reporting on the results of a Yankee Group Research report that finds that 80% of US businesses now have Macs. This represents an huge increase from just two years ago when only 47% of businesses reported having Mac users. The Yankee Group estimates that corporate marketshare has risen to 8-10% overall with 21% of firms reporting more than 50 Mac users. Interestingly, and perhaps not surprisingly, 28% are running Windows in virtualization.
While the consumer marketshare (and better yet, profitshare) numbers have looking up for some time now, it's good to see that Apple is finally starting to gain (or regain) a serious foothold in the corporate sphere as well. It's no surprise that as more users get acquainted with Apple gear at home that they're bringing pressure on corporate IT managers to implement Macs at work as well. Things just keep rolling for the bean counters in Cupertino.
If you've been miffed with Microsoft since Excel 2008 hit the stores due to the removal of Solver from the popular spreadsheet application, it may be time to lighten up. You can now download Solver for Excel 2008 for free from the FrontLine Systems Web site. FrontLine developed the original Solver for Excel 2004, and developed the Excel 2008 version at the request of the Microsoft Mac Business Unit (Mac BU).
Ben Gray, analyst at Forrester Research, says that Mac OS X accounts for 4.5 percent of the business operating system market, 3¾ times their share in January 2007.
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Good news for IBM Lotus users, Big Blue will bring an iPhone-compatible version of its Lotus Domino Web Access suite to the App Store later this year. The software, dubbed "Lotus iNotes," will allow businesses that utilize Lotus Domino Server to provide their users access to contacts, e-mail and calendars.
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