Whats your opinion on Macs for corp. vpns?

[thespeakerbox]

My corp network isn't very MAC friendly. I tried windows office and can live with using the compatability with iWork and also am looking forward to the refresh with snow leopard that will better integrate with exchange.

But, what about VPNs and logging to get my outlook email. What would be the best solution to get my outlook mail on my mac, wherever I am.

I would really love to RDP to my computer, but our company's policies just wont allow for that now.

I'd also love to hear what you guys think if general macs in corporate enviroments...thanks

 

[Nothinman]

OWA or Terminal Services, depending on what your company has setup.

Depends on the security requirements and plicies but as an IT person I wouldn't want Macs on my network either because I don't have the same control with GPOs and the like.

 

[Kmax82]

Maybe I'm of a different mindset than most IT people, but the attitude that is shown by most IT professionals annoys me. They should have to support what system that the user wants to use (within reason). If you can't control the Group Policy the way that you like, then find a way around it. That should be the ITs responsibility. I'm probably opening a can here... but I believe anyone can run a group of computers when you have them locked down so tight that you can't even change the bookmarks in the browser.

Just a personal opinion.. that's all... I'm sure there'll be a million responses as to why I'm an idiot.

 

[mugs]

Ditto to OWA if available. Unfortunately on a Mac you're stuck using the crappy OWA interface (at least with Exchange 2k3).

Originally posted by: Kmax82
Maybe I'm of a different mindset than most IT people, but the attitude that is shown by most IT professionals annoys me. They should have to support what system that the user wants to use (within reason). If you can't control the Group Policy the way that you like, then find a way around it. That should be the ITs responsibility. I'm probably opening a can here... but I believe anyone can run a group of computers when you have them locked down so tight that you can't even change the bookmarks in the browser.

Just a personal opinion.. that's all... I'm sure there'll be a million responses as to why I'm an idiot.

IT should be a facilitator, not an impediment. But the user also shouldn't be who decides what computer, OS and software they run, because the user isn't paying for it (not just the hardware and software, but the support from IT and from vendors).

 

[zerogear]

having multiple environments is a waste of time and resource, and for what? A few users convenience? Having more OS on a network means you have more security issues to address. TBH, If the network is all Macs, I would not allow users to be on Windows, and if its a Windows environment, I wouldn't let Macs on the network. It as simple as that, standardization in order to have easier maintainability.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: zerogear
having multiple environments is a waste of time and resource, and for what? A few users convenience? Having more OS on a network means you have more security issues to address. TBH, If the network is all Macs, I would not allow users to be on Windows, and if its a Windows environment, I wouldn't let Macs on the network. It as simple as that, standardization in order to have easier maintainability.

You think things should be easier for IT.

I think things should be easier for the departments that generate revenue.

 

[Nothinman]

Maybe I'm of a different mindset than most IT people, but the attitude that is shown by most IT professionals annoys me. They should have to support what system that the user wants to use (within reason). If you can't control the Group Policy the way that you like, then find a way around it.

So if I have to enforce a policy that says "Users can't copy files to USB drives" I need to spend X amount of hrs looking for a way to enforce that on OS X because you want a Mac? Sorry, that's not how it should work. The requirements are selected and then the software to implement it which sadly in most corporations is Windows.

That should be the ITs responsibility. I'm probably opening a can here... but I believe anyone can run a group of computers when you have them locked down so tight that you can't even change the bookmarks in the browser.

Anything is possible, however the question is how much time you want to waste on implementing it.

TBH, If the network is all Macs, I would not allow users to be on Windows, and if its a Windows environment, I wouldn't let Macs on the network. It as simple as that, standardization in order to have easier maintainability.

The sad part is that a network without Window is pretty much an impossibility.

 

[Kmax82]

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: zerogear
having multiple environments is a waste of time and resource, and for what? A few users convenience? Having more OS on a network means you have more security issues to address. TBH, If the network is all Macs, I would not allow users to be on Windows, and if its a Windows environment, I wouldn't let Macs on the network. It as simple as that, standardization in order to have easier maintainability.

You think things should be easier for IT.

I think things should be easier for the departments that generate revenue.

That's the funny part to me. Both sides want it to be easier on them. IT doesn't want to have to hassle with different OSes, and the users don't want to be bothered to learn Windows if they use OS X, or vice versa. Heh.. just a funny debate to me.

There should be some compromise on both sides IMHO.

 

[Kmax82]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
So if I have to enforce a policy that says "Users can't copy files to USB drives" I need to spend X amount of hrs looking for a way to enforce that on OS X because you want a Mac? Sorry, that's not how it should work. The requirements are selected and then the software to implement it which sadly in most corporations is Windows.

Anything is possible, however the question is how much time you want to waste on implementing it.

Well, having to restrict USB copying is a dumb rule anyway. But aside from that, I'll just have to disagree. I think that within reason, IT should accommodate the user.

Sometimes there are money issues to look at, like the cost of implementing separate setups for OS X and Windows, and possibly even Linux... but I think that those should be investigated, and if there is a moderate amount of time that can be spent without too much lost to other needs of the network, then it should be implemented.

Our IT dept countlessly will come back and say something isn't possible because they don't want to spend the time looking for a solution. So I'll spend an hour of my own time.. find a solution, and then they'll grumble, but allow me to use it. It's just something that they should at least be open to doing.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: Kmax82
That's the funny part to me. Both sides want it to be easier on them. IT doesn't want to have to hassle with different OSes, and the users don't want to be bothered to learn Windows if they use OS X, or vice versa. Heh.. just a funny debate to me.

There should be some compromise on both sides IMHO.

Unwillingness to learn Windows is not a good reason for using a Mac in an office where everyone uses Windows.

 

[Nothinman]

Well, having to restrict USB copying is a dumb rule anyway.

Maybe, but unless it's your company you don't get to decide on the policies.

Better examples are the fact that I can't push software, apply updates, push printers or setup folder redirection.

I think that within reason, IT should accommodate the user.

IT works for the company, not individual users.

 

[VinylxScratches]

Meh, the company I'm interning at has Windows, Linux (Red Hat, Cent OS, etc...) and Leopard and seems to function fine. I guess some departments are more tightly wound then others.

 

[Nothinman]

Meh, the company I'm interning at has Windows, Linux (Red Hat, Cent OS, etc...) and Leopard and seems to function fine. I guess some departments are more tightly wound then others.

Either that company has no/very loose policies or the Linux and OS X users aren't required to follow the same rules as the Windows users.

 

[sourceninja]

There are advantages and disadvantages to both a mixed environment and a mono culture. Personally, I prefer a mixed environment within reason. I feel it has less security problems and more flexibility. That said, I'm not for giving every user an option on what OS to use.

My company has a mixed environment. We have a smallish network of only about 1500 computers, so management isn't a big deal. We use novell to handle drive shares and permissions. All new computers get a nice image dropped on them and then deployed. All users are restricted except in very extreme circumstances where some windows applications simply require it. Even IT users run restricted profiles. But honestly, managing macs isn't very hard. We have about 100 of them on our network. I can push apps, printers, etc. There is no security policies to be concerned with (restricted meets every need I've had set down), etc.

I'm all for using the best tool for the job. If someone has a legitimate reason for wanting to use any OS, then I will help them put together the paperwork and take it to my boss for consideration. I myself no longer have a windows machine at work. My productivity has increased in most areas because of this. I spend 40% of my time using nothing but a terminal, 50% of my time doing web development. Textmate, and now xcode has been a huge performance increase for me. I have only one app that still requires windows that I use and we are in the process of ditching that product (for unrelated reasons) and replacing it with one that is linux/mac/win friendly.

So who gets macs at my company?

1) Web developers - programmers are basically given anything they want within reason and left to themselves for the most part. They submit a req and it gets bought and installed. All of us have moved to macs from windows or linux and have found the process to be much nicer for us.
2) Marketing - Most of the marketing people we hire have tons of mac experience. They know how to use them and it is better to keep them using what they are happy with.
3) Our mac lab instructors - makes senses right? The people who teach mac relating stuff at the college get macs.
4) Anyone with the word Dean, Director, or Vice, or president in their name that asks.
5) Anyone who has someone with the word Dean, Director, or Vice, or president in their name ask for them.
6) Anyone who got the inclusion of a mac rolled into their grant.

Everyone else gets a dell with windows XP on it. The exception being the guys who teach linux, they get linux (duh), and our network/sys admins who also use linux.

We don't manage linux the same way we manage osx. The guys who are allowed to use linux are at a level where they are just given a notebook/desktop and a free license to do anything they want. This would never happen to a normal user.

What kind of restrictions do you typically enforce on your users? I've worked for a few large companies and it seemed the only thing we really enforced was that you couldn't install unapproved software.

 

[Kmax82]

Originally posted by: mugs
Unwillingness to learn Windows is not a good reason for using a Mac in an office where everyone uses Windows.

I believe it is. If you are very familiar with a system then why should you be forced to change it? This is the major reason why people are sticking with Windows XP. It just works for them. They don't need to bother to learn Vista/7, because XP works just fine. I constantly like to use the newest stuff, so if I needed to switch back to Windows solely I could. I wouldn't be happy, but I could.

Anyway, I'm not a huge IT buff. I used to do some minor Windows Tech support back in High School/College, so I'm not an idiot by any means, but I'm no major player in the IT realm either. I think sourceninja's synopsis is very agreeable.

 

[sourceninja]

The time to deal with what OS you are going to use is when you are applying for the job. Asking to change everything once you are hired because you don't know how to use the system is like building a house next to an airport and asking them to keep the noise down.

 

[Nothinman]

I believe it is. If you are very familiar with a system then why should you be forced to change it?

If you apply for an accounting job where everyone uses GP but you're used to PeachTree would you really expect them to convert everyone else to your preference?

 

[Kmax82]

Originally posted by: sourceninja
The time to deal with what OS you are going to use is when you are applying for the job. Asking to change everything once you are hired because you don't know how to use the system is like building a house next to an airport and asking them to keep the noise down.

Yes, indeed.

Originally posted by: Nothinman
If you apply for an accounting job where everyone uses GP but you're used to PeachTree would you really expect them to convert everyone else to your preference?

No, that's something that should be discussed in your interview process. I also don't expect everyone to switch. I'm just saying that if you can use Mac and it doesn't affect anyone but you, then it shouldn't be a huge issue to stay on your Mac.

 

[Nothinman]

No, that's something that should be discussed in your interview process. I also don't expect everyone to switch. I'm just saying that if you can use Mac and it doesn't affect anyone but you, then it shouldn't be a huge issue to stay on your Mac.

As should the OS on your computer if you want something special, by default everyone always assumes (or should anyway) Windows since it's the defacto standard.

Unless you're completely cut off from the rest of your coworkers, using a Mac will always have some affect them. How much affect and whether it matters or not varies from company to company and person to person.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: Kmax82

Originally posted by: mugs
Unwillingness to learn Windows is not a good reason for using a Mac in an office where everyone uses Windows.

I believe it is. If you are very familiar with a system then why should you be forced to change it?

Because you're being paid to do your job... If you work for a company that allows you to choose whatever OS you want, that's great; my company is like that. Otherwise, decisions about what hardware and software people use should be based on the business's needs (and by that I don't mean the IT department's desires).

 

[Kmax82]

Originally posted by: mugs
Because you're being paid to do your job... If you work for a company that allows you to choose whatever OS you want, that's great; my company is like that. Otherwise, decisions about what hardware and software people use should be based on the business's needs (and by that I don't mean the IT department's desires).

I agree with your general statement.

 

[Cable God]

I have a Juniper SSL/VPN at work for RA, and use Mac, Windows and Linux boxes with it remotely with absolutely no issues. It just works. On the Linux machines, I use OpenVPN to connect to the Juniper.

 

[MGMorden]

Originally posted by: mugs
Otherwise, decisions about what hardware and software people use should be based on the business's needs (and by that I don't mean the IT department's desires).

Except that IT generally gets tasked with those decisions by the people in charge for a very good reason: they're the ones that know the most about that area.

The simple fact is: supporting tons and tons of different configurations takes more time and effort. That's not an "IT is lazy issue" - lots of times IT is so busy they simply don't have the additional resources to dedicate to it. So supporting additional platforms, apps, etc means hiring additional IT personnel. The bean counters don't like dropping another $150,000 per year for 2 or 3 more IT people because a handful of users want to use Mac OS X instead of Windows, Opera instead of Firefox, or Wordperfect instead of Word.

Not only that, but almost by definition a simpler setup is a more secure setup. You run varying or unknown configurations and you get into trouble, simply put.

Aside from that you also get into a ton of testing issues with multiple versions - it makes no sense to track down quirky platform bugs and jump through hoops when you know everything that's supposed to work on a standard setup.

Where I'm at we're pretty strict on it. You run the standard OS (Windows XP currently), and standard applications. No user is allowed to install new applications, and for certain applications we even have a background process that restricts the running application to a specific checksum - if the binary is modified it will not run. All patches are handled remotely and on a schedule to ensure that we all move up the machines at the same time. Even our hardware is kept relatively similar - each year we generally approve a single desktop configuration and a single laptop configuration and without express permission from the IT director, a department cannot purchase anything but those configurations.

Sounds strict, but it works well. We support nearly 1000 users at 4 physical locations with only 10 IT staff.

 

[sourceninja]

The problem is most IT people making these decisions will go with what they like and know, not what is the best tool for the job in the price range they can allocate.

I know this because I have fought the good fight many times. I've seen network admins attempt to replace perfectly good switches because they didn't 'know' extreme and all our problems would magically go away if we bought cisco .Oddly enough all our problems magically went away when we replaced that network admin. I've seen IT guys suggest that bringing in microsoft products when perfectly good solutions had already been purchased and never implemented. I've seen IT staff argue that we shouldn't even take a look at open office because nobody would understand how to use it and most of our office users do nothing but build text documents that are published as pdf's and placed on our website. I've seen IT staff argue that we should be switching from linux/apache/php to microsoft and .net because they knew how to manage it and it would lower our TCO even though all of our programmers are proficient in php, not c#.

Most IT people have a hammer and see every problem as a nail. It was very hard for me to learn to break that mold and to look at each problem as a unique situation that required a unique solution. This brought me to look at open source as well as commercial software, to look at apple, to look at dell, to look at sun. I recently was asked to replace our solaris environment with redhat. I am a PRO linux guy. I love linux and have all but removed sun from all of our systems except for the few in question. These few being ones that management has said must have OS and hardware support contracts. The software vendor for the software that runs on these systems only supports redhat. After being very excited and making a few calls, I found out that dell/HP and redhat would actually cost us more per server per year then buying brand new sun hardware with solaris support (because we are education). I really wanted to hide that from my boss. But I sucked it up and recommended we buy new sun hardware and not move to redhat. That made a few people a little upset with me as they don't 'know' solaris and really wanted to use linux. They recommended me for this task because they knew I loved linux and thought I'd make sure it happened.

 

[Nothinman]

Not only that, but almost by definition a simpler setup is a more secure setup. You run varying or unknown configurations and you get into trouble, simply put.

Generally I agree but monocultures can also be bad, i.e. one person gets infected and since everyone else is running the same, vulnerable software it spreads to everyone instantly.

The problem is most IT people making these decisions will go with what they like and know, not what is the best tool for the job in the price range they can allocate.

The two go hand in hand. Why would you want to use something that your IT people can't properly support?

I know this because I have fought the good fight many times. I've seen network admins attempt to replace perfectly good switches because they didn't 'know' extreme and all our problems would magically go away if we bought cisco .Oddly enough all our problems magically went away when we replaced that network admin.

Why would you hire someone who didn't have any experience with the brand hardware you were using in the first place?

I've seen IT guys suggest that bringing in microsoft products when perfectly good solutions had already been purchased and never implemented. I've seen IT staff argue that we shouldn't even take a look at open office because nobody would understand how to use it and most of our office users do nothing but build text documents that are published as pdf's and placed on our website. I've seen IT staff argue that we should be switching from linux/apache/php to microsoft and .net because they knew how to manage it and it would lower our TCO even though all of our programmers are proficient in php, not c#.

It sounds like you have more problems with your hiring process than with your IT people. Stop hiring people with MS backgrounds if you don't want them to push MS solutions.