InformationWeek released this great article today, discussing whether or not Apple has an obligation to serve the enterprise market. Since the company was born, Apple has been about giving the end-user a pain-free experience but businesses have different needs than individual people. Does that mean that Apple has an obligation to serve the corporations as well?

Apple has a deep rooted culture, and part of that culture is to give the end-user the simplest and greatest experience possible. Apple has an obligation towards everyone, to do just that, because that’s what their philosophy is all about. Bureaucracy should be ignored and focus should continue to be on the end-user, because that is the only way to create a product that is truly great from the individuals perspective.

And when you think about it, the individual perspective is by far the most important. Businesses aren’t giant machines; they are composed and run by people. Making a corporation happy is in the end a matter of satisfying individual needs, only on a larger scale. That’s why Apple should focus primarily on the end-user, but that doesn’t at all mean they should ignore the collective needs of a corporation.

Businesses have different, not necessarily more important or complex, but different, needs and wants than those of a single person. One such want is the one that the article mentions; native support for Microsoft Exchange in the Apple iPhone. So the question is, does Apple have a moral obligation to fulfill such needs and wants?

Let’s think different. Corporate needs should be fulfilled by satisfying the needs of corporate users, that’s the Apple way of going about it. And as blogger John Gruber writes, “this suggestion isn’t about making it easier for corporate users; this is about making it easier for corporate IT departments that have chained themselves to Exchange.”

Apple is revolutionary in more ways than one. Many people don’t fully understand what the Apple culture are doing to the world in form of information technology. While power to the people may be an exaggeration, simplicity and satisfaction sure isn’t. Apple is shifting focus from corporate bureaucracy to the needs of the real customer, the end-user.

It’s a noble thing Apple are doing. Corporations and governments may run the world, but they are in turn run by us, the individuals. As John Gruber so elegantly put it, “like many successful revolutions, this one might come from the bottom.”

Via InformationWeek.