A consortium of five companies has announced the creation of the Enterprise Desktop Alliance (EDA). The aim of the group is to promote the deployment of Macs in the enterprise. The five founding companies — Centrify, LANrev, Atempo, GroupLogic, and Parallels — are all focused on integrating the Mac operating system and infrastructure with Windows and PC-based network infrastructure for large companies.
With Apple's introduction of the iPhone and iPod Touch, along with enterprise tools for these devices, Apple is capturing more market adoption in business, making the creation of an organisation like EDA very timely, says Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research.
While EDA's immediate goal, says Peter Frankl, chief operating officer at LANrev, is to make IT departments aware of the tools the consortium offers, Gottheil says the organisation can also serve to raise mindshare in IT departments about Macs.
"Enterprise IT departments have always had to tolerate Macs and probably have to tolerate more now," says Gottheil, so there would be a benefit to IT if the EDA offered thought leadership, white papers, and software tools dealing with IT's Mac concerns, he says.
According to LANrev's Frankl, as EDA grows in numbers, it hopes to become an organisation that will create a community of IT professionals and a resource to share best practices around the use of the Mac in the enterprise.