Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has made a huge number of mistakes in recent years, and the company has spent a huge amount of money in areas it simply did not need to. Its future is by no means in question after problems with Windows 8, but it is on the back foot and attacked from all sides. Luckily for the company, Windows 9 is on the way and it’s bound to keep Apple out of business.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) announced a deal earlier this month that will see enterprise software expert IBM sell Apple devices with enterprise software packages installed. The deal was heralded by some as the breakthrough into enterprise that Apple has been threatening for years, but it’s not that simple. Apple appears to be doing little other than offering tacit support to IBM. Microsoft, on the other hand, is developing a killer enterprise system that will keep Cupertino out of the market, or, at the very least, relegate Apple to a minor enterprise role.

Microsoft Concentrates On Enterprise

Almost everything that Microsoft has done really wrong in the last decade has been aimed at consumers. The company’s Xbox division is hemorrhaging money, the Surface RT was a mess, and Windows 8 with its flat colorful design, messed with the workflow of millions of the company’s core customers. The Zune is dead, and the era of Ballmer is over. Microsoft has always done its best work in business services. Now it’s time to own up to the fact, and own the future of that market.

Windows 9 is, if CEO Satya Nadella’s public comments can be trusted, not going to be an incredibly innovative OS in form or function. It’s going to do what Windows 8 should have done. The Start menu and desktop will be the default mode of navigation on a laptop or terminal. The metro tile menu will be default on a tablet. Windows 9 will know what kind of form it’s operating on and change to suit. That solves the major problem that people had with Windows 8, an interface issue blown into a fatal flow.

On the other hand, Windows 9 will be a conduit for everything that Microsoft is selling to business, from its cloud applications to its office suite to the very thin client infrastructure that people work on. Windows 9 is going to be at the center of all of those offerings, and the company’s services are going to work best on a Windows 9 phone or on a Windows 9 tablet.

Microsoft may or may not move hardware in this way, but it’s not about the hardware. It’s about enterprise software. Microsoft does an awful job at creating it and IT managers have constant implementation headaches, but their offerings are more complete and in the end, for most people they’re better than anything else out there. Apple is a different story.

Windows 9 Shuts Apple Enterprise Down

Apple appears to be making a halfhearted attempt to enter the enterprise game, and it may release an iPad Pro soon to show just how half-hearted it can be. The company offers nothing to enterprise and can at best offer the kind of surface-level apps that IBM is building to small and medium enterprises.

In order to get into the enterprise IT market, you need a solution that nobody else is offering. For Microsoft Windows 9 and the cloud of services that surrounds it, the completeness of the offering sells itself. Apple has nothing of the sort, and those hoping to run a large company on Apple enterprise technology should understand the height of a wall that Microsoft is building with Windows 9.

Disclosure: Author represents that he has no position in any stocks mentioned in this article at the time this article was submitted.