Apple and IBM Combine to create business apps

My HTC phone had been stolen during a funeral service in a church in Nigeria and I needed to replace it. I visited my local AT&T carrier in New York to be educated in the latest smartphones. Unfortunately, the version of my HTC phone was no longer carried by AT&T and the replacement HTC phone, […]

My HTC phone had been stolen during a funeral service in a church in Nigeria and I needed to replace it. I visited my local AT&T carrier in New York to be educated in the latest smartphones. Unfortunately, the version of my HTC phone was no longer carried by AT&T and the replacement HTC phone, which I bought, was not as cool. In addition, one problem with the HTC phone running Windows Mobile was that it was very difficult to use. I decided to look at other products. The sales attendant raved about iPhone 3, the reigning version of iPhone as at that time. He pointed out the screen touch-enabled capabilities, the glitz and sleekness, the slide-to-turn-off capability, and the very sophisticated, but horribly inefficient cursor. I asked to type on the screen, hoping to replicate the QWERTY keyboard functionalities I enjoyed so much on my HTC phones, but this turned out to be a problem. The iPhone does not support QWERTY keyboard and doing any descent typing on it was simply out of the question – it can’t be done. The iPhone also does not have a “delete” function, meaning you have to go through the rather rigorous process of relocating the cursor to a position ahead of the character you want to delete and then do a “backspace.” I needed to “cut-and-paste” text, but alas, iPhone was not into that kind of stuff. At this point, I knew my smartphone life had dramatically changed for the worse.
Today’s iPhones (5C, 5S) are still pretty much the same as iPhone 3, as far as business productivity is concerned. So is iPad, Apple’s award-winning tablet, although both now support Office. Yet, it is these same low-productivity products that have propelled Apple into the most valuable company on the planet. The high demand for iPhone and iPad stems from the delivery of promised (modest) capabilities, the music (iTunes), ease-of-use, slickness and glitz of the products that get users mesmerized, the physical attractiveness of the finished products and the packaging, the simple consumer shopping experience, and the few and easy-to-understand product lines.
As the demands for Apple’s consumer products have begun to saturate, the incentive is there for Apple to boost the productivity content and corporate-tool support level for its products. The deployment of Microsoft Office products (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) in Apple’s iPad tablets on 27 March 2014 seems to have been a step in that direction.  Of course office productivity tools are not enterprise-level tools, per se, although they both stretch the capabilities of Apple’s current devices. To understand the distinction between a consumer product and an enterprise-level deployment, consider this statement: Apple’s iPhones or iPads are used inside 98% of Fortune 500 companies (enterprises), often by employees who bring the devices from home for their own “consumer-type” computing needs – emails, music, camera functions, web-surfing, and so on. On the other hand, these same employees use totally different, employer-supplied software packages (for their work), which are usually deployed on PC desktops and laptops.
As opposed to just supporting productivity and business tools in Apple’s products, new products that intimately combine the consumer-proven Apple’s products and International Business Machines’ (IBM’s) long history of developing corporate (enterprise) resource planning software applications, will be the focus of the partnership entered into between Apple and IBM. The deal will create simple-to-use business apps, and sell iPhones and iPads to IBM’s corporate customers. The applications will cater to big businesses, or enterprises, so that enterprise apps will be as simple-to-use as the Apple’s consumer apps that everyone uses.
That the essence of the Apple-IBM deal might be a pointer to industry trends was pointed out by Daisuke Wakabayashi in the 16 July 2014 issue of the Wall Street Journal: “Major sellers of technology services to companies, including IBM’s services arm and Accenture PLC have shifted strategies to help banks, car makers and other big companies develop mobile apps to complement or replace PC programs their employees use. Some newer technology vendors, including Salesforce.com Inc. offer apps to let employees tap into their online customer-relationship-management and human-resources programs from mobile devices.”
In the Apple-IBM deal, engineers from both companies will collaborate on workplace apps that take advantage of IBM’s big-data analytics and computing infrastructure. Also, IBM’s employees will provide on-site support and service (known as AppleCare) to ordinary consumers—for Apple devices. Virginia Rometty, IBM’s CEO, said one of the first apps being developed together helps airline pilots determine the appropriate amount of fuel to carry on a flight. “This requires not only crunching data but presenting it in an easy-to-understand way on the pilot’s tablet computer.” The goal, according to Ms. Rometty, is to “scale down the sophisticated analytics” so an employee can make an informed decision. The two companies said they intend to create more than 100 apps, for industries including retail, health care, banking, telecommunications, travel and transportation.” The first of those apps is expected to be available this fall, when Apple releases a new version of its mobile software, iOS 8.
Depending on the specific enterprise application and the level to which it’s beaten down to “fit” into a cell phone, some real challenges lie ahead: the devices have relatively low random-access memory (RAM) and computing power, and most currently do not handle multi-threading (carrying out many operations (threads) at the same time) well.
The take-away from this article is that Apple and IBM have entered into serious partnership to develop simple-to-use enterprise-level software applications on Apple’s smartphones and tablets.