I’m sure you read the news that Steve Jobs has stepped down as Apple CEO. The board took Mr. Jobs’ recommendation and appointed Tim Cook CEO of Apple. What is clear is that the media and the analysts are all abuzz with speculation about what will remain the same under Mr. Cook and what will change. Here’s a bit of speculation from Kusnetzky Group.
Apple’s policies have long appeared to be anti virtualization. This goes far beyond allowing Mac OS to be run inside of a virtual machine to not allowing access virtualization, application virtualization or other forms of processing virtualization.
Since network and storage virtualization happen outside of Apple’s iron hand of control, Mac-based systems have successsfully been brought into virtualized environments. Some would say they were dragged in kicking and screaming.
It is my speculation that the good Mr. Cook will finally listen to enterprise Mac users and understand that virtualization of all types are a large part of IT plans. Apple will respond to those customers’ requests and allow access to Mac systems via access virtualization products. The company will allow application virtualization suppliers to encapsulate Mac applications and support application streaming, workload management across many machines and other nifty tricks offered by those suppliers.
Dare I think it? Mr. Cook could allow Mac OS to be officially run inside of a virtual machine making VDI solutions possible as well as making Mac applications a full part of consolidated systems running on a single physical system.
Unfortunately, I fear that Mr. Cook will follow Mr. Jobs example and restrict access to needed technology.
