As governments everywhere continue to deal with the economically damaging fallout of last week’s appalling Crowdstrike/Microsoft disaster, it’s no surprise to see more governments switching to Apple’s most stable platform.
To put things into context, Parametrix Insurance has analyzed the consequences of last week’s global blue screen of death incident and assesses the economic cost of the moment on the world economy as being in the multiple billions of dollars. Estimated direct financial loss across the Fortune 500 was $5.4 billion, Parametrix said.
That’s a painful amount to lose.
This did real damage
While it has subsequently been claimed that 97% of affected systems are back in operation, that still leaves hundreds of thousands of business-critical PCs that aren’t doing their job. I’ll be looking more closely at these consequences next week. I imagine businesses that became reliant on these products are already exploring their options — after all, that kind of $5.4 billion cost was almost certainly never anticipated by IT departments when estimating the TCOs of their PC fleets.
These incidents will undoubtedly make a lot of people think twice when it comes to their next hardware upgrade. After all, as business becomes increasingly mobile, and services migrate to the cloud, the strength of vendor lock-in is shrinking to the extent that it is becoming much easier to transition to multiple platforms to build business resilience against future debacles — or move to a platform characterized by lack of such drama, which is Apple.
Is it time to migrate?
Apple is ready if you are.
Not only is the company now equipped with a wide and diverse range of enterprise-focused companies such as Addigy, Jamf, Kandji and all the other firms I speak with each week, but its future-focused platforms are inherently more resilient by design. That’s why Apple dumped support for kernel extensions years ago, among other examples. While no platform is ever completely secure, the vast majority of problems on Apple’s platforms emerge through user error, not globally deployed automated PC-borking software updates.
Of course, the bias that Apple is a consumer product that isn’t fit for the enterprise runs deep, and shifting that view is taking time — though events such as the Crowdstrike disaster should help people question that opinion.
I think the momentum to diversify is growing.
Apple is ready for government
That the German government is switching to Apple speaks to this trend. The procurement office of Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community’s (BMI) recently concluded a deal with Bechtle for the supply of up to 300,000 Apple devices across the entire federal administration. That means all government agencies will use iPhones and iPads equipped with Apple’s iNDIGO (iOS Native Devices in Government Operation) platform.
iNDIGO offers built-in security features, regular updates, hardware-based encryption and strict data protection policies and has been approved by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) for the secure sharing of confidential content classified as “for official use only” (VS-NfD).”
It’s very similar to the increasing adoption of Apple products across US government. Apple is also “actively participating in several governmental security evaluations and certifications globally,” the company says.
Time to switch?
As I see it, for companies looking to build more resilience in IT after the Crowdstrike strike, news that Apple’s platforms are considered good enough and secure enough for active use by national governments should lay to rest the utterly mistaken myth that Apple’s devices aren’t good for business. Apple is now ready for government. It’s ready for business.
Finally, of course, regardless of whatever platforms you choose to deploy, it seems sensible to check the terms and conditions of any mission-critical service to ensure you’ll get compensated in the event a software patch breaks your business and costs you money. Why should any customer pay for a product that fails?
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