Pure Speculation…

I’ve been a long time “Apple guy” and have used Macs at home and in the workplace as far back as 1988. Over the years, I’ve paid close attention to the various moves made by Apple.  When Apple announced the end of the Xserve line a couple of months ago, I initially thought that they were walking away from the enterprise market.  Adding to this perception was their announcement in the same timeframe that they would no longer shoulder the burden of porting Java to OS X.  However, the enterprise signals were mixed.  The iPad is being welcomed in the enterprise market and Apple has actually partnered with a large IT firm to further iPad adoption in the enterprise.

Well, the Java issue was soon put to rest when Oracle and Apple announced that the OS X port of Java would become part of the OpenJDK effort.  That still left Apple without a rack-mountable server platform of the sort that would be welcomed in most data centers.  The Mac Mini and Mac Pro server configurations just don’t fit the mold.

Then I thought, “what if Apple decided to relax the licensing restrictions for OS X Server to enable it to be virtualized on non-Apple hardware?”  (To date, only the server edition of OS X is licensed for virtualization and only on Apple hardware.)  The recent unveiling of the fact that “Lion Server” will be part of OS X implies that there will no longer be a separate OS X Server flavor.  This further implies that Apple will either license all copies of OS X Lion for use in a virtualized environment or shut the door on virtualization altogether.  I tend to think they will choose the former.

All that is needed to complete the picture, is for Apple to allow Lion to be virtualized on non-Apple hardware.  Then they’d have broader reach in the enterprise by being able to run atop a variety of hardware through virtualization.  This could be quite a coup, since OS X Lion includes some features geared specifically towards the iPad.

We shall see.

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