Will advances in the Mac OS tip the scales for BYOPC?

 CNET recently reported that Apple’s upcoming Snow Leopard OS will support Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Why is this important for BYOPC? Because until this release, BYOPC presumed some amount of virtualization (in most cases desktop virtualization) to support the killer app — email. According to the CNET article, “Improved Exchange support will be integrated into Mail, iCal and Address Book in Snow Leopard, which means email, calendar appointments, to-do lists and contacts from Outlook will be viewable on your personal calendar, mail and address books. It also allows things like dragging and dropping contacts into iCal to schedule meetings, and your Mac will be able to discover time conflicts between personal and work calendars and change the meeting time and location.”

So, with virtualization no longer needed to support the killer app on a Mac, organizations will need to rethink how they will support users that want to use Macs in their native state for corporate activities. However, this is a huge step forward for employees wanting to use Mac’s in the corporate environment…IT can no longer hang their hat on email not being supported. This opens a few questions for me:

• will IT shops have the proficiency to support the Mac?
• will email work well on a Mac and live up to expectations?
• will this follow a similar trajectory as the iPhone with execs just demanding it?
• what is the fate of VMware Fusion and Parallels?

Regardless, my advice is this: Walk down to your local Apple store and offer the Genius behind the counter a job!