Adopters of Apple server and storage gear say the technology is ready for the rigors of enterprise IT duty. They point to the vendor’s shift to the Intel architecture, plus its support of directory services, clustering and other technology advances.

Not to say Apple still doesn’t have plenty of doubters, who say the company should stick to its consumer efforts.

We heard from both sides – and some in between – in recent weeks after we put out a call to readers to get their views on Apple’s enterprise readiness. While we weren’t exactly flooded with responses – which in itself might say something about Apple’s standing in the enterprise – roughly three-quarters of the those who did weigh in are bullish on Apple’s enterprise offerings and direction. That’s consistent with a poll we ran on our Web site earlier this year, in which 80% of the nearly 900 respondents said Macintosh servers and desktops are ready for the enterprise.

Forum: What do you think about the enterprise readiness of Apple's technologies?

More please, Mr. Jobs

“Is Apple ready for the enterprise? I’d say: Yes!,” writes Dan Stranathan, Macintosh systems administrator for Gear for Sports in Lenexa, Kan. They have been for years.” Stranathan has 200 Macintoshs and 500 PCs in his environment. The Macintoshes are integrated with his Microsoft Active Directory and Exchange environments.

“My Microsoft Exchange engineer uses OS X for all kinds of Active Directory-related diagnostics. My Cisco engineer now runs both Mac OS X and Windows on an Apple computer,” he says. “One of our Oracle database administrators has recently moved to Mac OS X as well. Life is good.”

Walter Cornelison, director of technology for Tropitone Furniture in Irvine, Calif., also is relying heavily on Apple products.

“The use of MacBook Pros in our IT organization has been such a big success for us that we have added a dual quad-core Mac Pro Tower to replace two Windows PCs in the IT department and are in the process of moving our entire enterprise backup function to a new Apple Xserve RAID combination with an Exabyte tape library running BakBone Software's NetVault,” he says.

“From an IT perspective, I can say that the move to Mac has been met with both acceptance and satisfaction,” Cornelison says. “Apple is making gains in the enterprise and with the onerous costs and complexities Microsoft has created for all enterprises, more companies could stand a real alternative for their enterprise operations.”