According to the Wall Street Journal, the PC market is declining, and both commerce and malicious users are following the money into the Apple/Android brand. Security and networking IT companies hoping to maintain a foothold in this changing market are adapting to include an Apple/Mac support component. Recently, Jason Dettburn, CEO of Addigy, gave a presentation about the wisdom behind such a turn, and put forth some of his company’s own innovations in the Mac security space.
The World of PCs Is Dying
A major point of Jason’s presentation centered around the fact that companies in all industries are facing great pressure to integrate into the Mac world. The universities that are graduating the next generation of the workforce are fully ensconced in Apple culture, just as much as the larger SMBs are currently involved in PC-based industry standards. Companies will eventually have to consider that industry standards are moving to Mac as well, which provides an opportunity for any company offering Apple IT service offerings.
The Mac Is Not Bulletproof
Jason noted that, “If you talk to any of the Mac users, a lot of them [think] their devices are bulletproof.” However, Macs beat Microsoft Windows in the public database of vulnerabilities last year, outpacing Flash as well. This will become more apparent as the vulnerabilities of the newest Mac OS system begin to erode office productivity.
Opportunities for Growth
Jason noted an immediate opportunity exists for a 10 percent cash increase in growth per year just by focusing on the Macs that are already in a client environment. Most companies have 10 to 15 percent of these machines within their network already, and this increase requires only a bit of focus, not a new acquisition strategy. He also touched on many of the misconceptions that MSP firms must set aside in order to maximize growth. Agencies do not need an Apple-certified engineer to get started, nor do they need to acquire a huge Apple-based client before moving focus into that market space. The Addigy platform emulates the user-friendly UI of Windows rather than forcing IT teams to learn code, so technicians will immediately feel comfortable with the platform without months of “prep.”
Many internal IT departments simply do not have the tools to support the Macs that are already within their systems, even the larger SMBs and enterprise-level companies that should have their security together. He noted that a great deal of opportunity exists “a little farther upstream” with mid-market and enterprise-level companies.
The level of services immediately improves when Macs are included in a security program. The before-and-after performance of many Addigy clients after the shoring up of 70+ El Capitan vulnerabilities is quantifiable, and although “security is difficult to sell,” as Jason noted, he also inferred that the C-level/performance class of employees would gravitate toward a Mac security focus naturally once the value made itself known in the environment. Jason also noted that one of his biggest clients in New York came from that client’s desperate attempt to find any Mac service organization, so the sell may not be as difficult as you think if you look in the right places (upstream, the Apple network).
Some of Addigy’s Mac clients charge three times the money for Mac cleanup and security as they do for PCs. However, Macs do not require three times the work of a PC. This means higher operating margins automatically, and all that is truly required is to inform people of the service. Jason noted that he has companies in “Europe, Croatia, Africa, [and] Australia” with “executives who are coming in and putting pressure on their organization to support their Macs.”
You can sign up for a trial of Addigy at https://ulistic.addigy.com/signup.
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