Army Begins Core Configuration for Apple Computers

Via GCN -

For all the popularity the current crop of Apple computers have in the consumer and media markets, you still won’t find many Macs on the job in government offices. But that could begin to change.

A team in the Army’s chief information officer office that contributed to the development of the Federal Desktop Core Configuration for Microsoft’s operating systems is in the early stages of developing a comparable configuration model for Apple Macs.

Although the number of Mac users in the Army — estimated at 15,000 to 20,000 — pales in comparison with the hundreds of thousands of PC users, those who do use Macs rely on them heavily to complete the Army’s multimedia and publishing work.

And more employees likely would use Macs if they could.

The problem: Mac users must still turn to a second computer to conduct secure Army business, including e-mail messages. That’s partly because Macs don’t work with the Army’s Microsoftbased Active Directory network and can’t support mandatory Common Access Card authentication, among other requirements, said Amy Harding, director of the Integration and Plans Directorate in the Army’s CIO office.

Given the time and effort it took to complete the FDCC for Microsoft’s XP and Vista operating systems, it’s not likely that a comparable configuration for Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard operating system would be completed before the end of 2009. But the Army’s interest in testing a standard Mac desktop configuration could make Macs more commonly available in the government.

“Within the next three years, we could have as many as 100,000 Macs on LandWarNet,” the Army’s information network backbone, Harding said. “The key is getting third-party developers to work for both Windows and Macs.”