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Apple Teams Up With IBM for Enterprise Push
- jarjoura 12y agoI wanted to immediately shout, "now THIS is something SJ would be rolling in his grave over." However, in the mid 2000s he was a big believer in switching to Intel and even though I found it hard to believe a company that pushed PowerPC for so long was suddenly so willing to join "the dark side" at the time. His Intel switch bet played off for Apple and I imagine this bet by Tim Cook will also play out for them. I look forward to having many more years of iOS work and many more years of Xcode and iOS SDK improvements :-). Stability and security will be at the top of the lists :-D
- Osmium 12y ago> I wanted to immediately shout, "now THIS is something SJ would be rolling in his grave over." Don't forget the HP-branded iPods too, which was also a bit weird. That was under Steve too.
- raverbashing 12y agoRockr phone
- sjwright 12y agoThe ROKR might well be the worst thing Steve ever showed in any of his keynotes. It was comedy awful.
- uptown 12y agoThe Apple Hifi must be a close-second.
- mortenjorck 12y agoThe Hifi was hardly awful. It was just... a startlingly average product to merit a Steve Jobs unveiling.
- ihnorton 12y agoSeems like it made sense at the time [1]: > Thanks to HP's distribution network, the iPod+HP was sold in retailers where Apple did not have any presence at the time, which included Wal-Mart, RadioShack, and Office Depot. Many of these retailers now sell Apple iPods. In hindsight, the subsequent sales explosion makes it look unnecessary [2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod+HP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod+HP [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod#Sales http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod#Sales
- mpweiher 12y ago"In 1989, IBM signed a deal with NeXT to license NeXTstep to run on Big Blue's RISC chip. But Jobs now says that while a long-term relationship with IBM will move forward, "it's no secret that the project to put NeXT software on the IBM RS/6000 has broken down." -- http://www.kevra.org/TheBestOfNext/ThirdPartyProducts/ThirdPartyHardware/NeXTSTEPonNonNeXTComputers/NeXTSTEPonNonNeXTComputers.html http://www.kevra.org/TheBestOfNext/ThirdPartyProducts/ThirdP...
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- whyenot 12y agoWhy would he be rolling in his grave? When Steve Jobs returned to Apple his laptop of choice was an IBM Thinkpad (560E). In fact, "he delivered it to Apple’s designers as a model of where the PowerBook line needed to go." http://applefool.com/applefool/IBM_ThinkPad_560E.html http://applefool.com/applefool/IBM_ThinkPad_560E.html
- sjwright 12y agoThere have been numerous instances of IBM and Apple working together in the past. The AIM alliance (PowerPC) and Taligent immediately come to mind.
- cmollis 12y agoTaligent!.. holy crap I'm old.
- filmgirlcw 12y agoBetter article/interview: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101834316 http://www.cnbc.com/id/101834316
- gojomo 12y agoThe last big Apple-IBM alliance in 1991 gave the world Taligent, Kaleida, and the PowerPC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_alliance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_alliance
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- cratermoon 12y agoThe big Microsoft-IBM alliance gave the world... OS/2 and Windows.
- rational-future 12y agoI don't think IBM was ever involved with Windows.
- valarauca1 12y agoI don't mean to be so dismissive but you kidding me right? IBM and Microsoft signed an contract, that IBM AT clone computers would ship with Microsoft DOS and they would license (and pay for) every-single-copy of it. The openish IBM PC standard allowed for Microsoft to continually expand into their near monopoly on the Business, and Home PC market. That agreement literally built Microsoft. When they signed that agreement, Microsoft didn't even own the rights to DOS, or had even made an OS. They just licensed a BASIC compiler.
- gojomo 12y agoDOS and Windows are not the same thing. One reasonable interpretation of the history is that "Windows" is specifically the point over which Microsoft & IBM diverged, with Windows being the additions/lineage where Microsoft ruled and IBM's formal contributions essentially nil.
- ams6110 12y ago
- IBM 12y agoNobody ever got fired for buying Apple?
- yardie 12y agoIf you look at the way schools are buying tablets. It's pretty spot on. They could go for a cheaper Android tablets but most of them are junk or 1 step above junk.
- the906 12y agoThis makes me incredibly happy.
- yuhong 12y agoNotice that this don't mention anything about OS X.
- craigching 12y agoI don't know if that's "funny" (curious I'd say) or not. It seems that Apple's push is towards iOS and more away from OS X. More and more it seems that iOS features are making their way into OS X and not the other way around. Maybe once you can easily develop apps for iOS on your iDevice you might see the death knell of OS X and bigger hardware. Just speculation on my part ;)
- Glide 12y agoI had that gut feeling prior to the stuff released in WWDC this year. If anything they're going for a complete customer experience across their iOS and OS X devices. OS X apps will get storyboards which was an iOS only thing in Xcode. It really feels like they're going back over a lot of APIs in OS X and giving them a makeover with the lessons learned from iOS. Where Microsoft may have given developers a single API, Apple gives different APIs that have parity. (Plenty of the new APIs seem to work on both 10.10 and iOS 8)
- josho 12y agoRight, because Windows is entrenched. There is little hope for OSX to displace Windows. Look at how Sun & Linux initiatives tried and largely failed. This is for iOS a greenfield space, where Apple wants to lock up their position as the standard mobile platform. Apple can win without working too hard to displace the incumbent (likely Blackberry).
- EGreg 12y agoI think IBM needs this more than Apple.
- nostromo 12y agoI'd love to see Watson replace Siri someday.
- IBM 12y agoI think Siri as a brand won't change, but that doesn't mean Watson can't be doing things in the back-end.
- the906 12y agoI'd love to see the two as a couple.
- axman6 12y agoI think Watson's role will be more geared towards the HealthKit side of things for Apple, since that's already what IBM are putting the technology towards.
- AnthonyMouse 12y agoThey're talking about Google here but this is more of a claim against Microsoft's territory. It looks like a play to replace Active Directory and Exchange Server with device-integrated cloud services.
- jfoutz 12y agoprivate cloud services. buy the big iron from IBM, everybody's phones sync to private app stores and private backup systems. Seems like a pretty swell idea, especially when you have legal security obligations like HIPAA or whatever.
- blazespin 12y agoWrong. The future is mobile. This is a play against Knox/Samsung.
- psbp 12y agoIt should be noted that Knox is being baked into AOSP, so it's presumably in Google's hands now.
- bluedevil2k 12y agoThis smells of desperation for IBM - it seems to be risk free for Apple. IBM sells their expensive mainframes/server, expensive consultants, and oh by the way, you have to buy 300 iPads as well as part of the contract.
- gonzo 12y agoIBM is already in the accounts, and the accounts want iPads.
- r00fus 12y agoMakes sense given the historical past alliances [1] Combined with extensions in iOS, I wonder if we can expect to see similar partnerships soon across the enterprise space? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC
- julianozen 12y agoWelcome, IBM. Seriously.
- sjwright 12y agoThat's a clever comment. http://www.cbc.ca/undertheinfluence/Welcome%20IBM.%20seriously%20ad.jpg http://www.cbc.ca/undertheinfluence/Welcome%20IBM.%20serious...
- selimthegrim 12y ago_Logarithmic leaps_? Clearly some copyeditor was nodding off there...
- pohl 12y ago...or was seduced by the siren song of alliteration.
- mathattack 12y agoTaligent anyone? It will be interesting to see how this works out. The one thing Apple lacks is the monster enterprise salesforce that IBM has. And that may be the strongest thing that IBM has left.
- Ixiaus 12y agoI was about to say, MONEY, but then I looked at Apple's market cap and IBM's market cap...
- gonzo 12y agofuck market cap. (Apple: $574.75B, IBM: $190.79B) look at net income. For the three months ended 29 March, Apple had $10.223B in net income. For roughly the same quarter (ending 31 March), IBM had $2.384B. Apple is carrying $18.949B in cash and cash equivalents (though most of this is locked-up overseas), and another $22.401B in short-term marketable securities. IBM is carrying $9.409B in cash and cash equivalents, and a mere $295M in markable securities.
- na85 12y agoOh, how the Mighty have fallen. Big Blue used to be the cream of the crop.
- iwaffles 12y agoThe Times They Are a-Changin'
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- hiroprot 12y agoHeadline could use some clarification...at first I thought this was about enterprise push notifications.
- fleitz 12y agoConfusion is part of the enterprise market. As soon as you figure out what a product actually does, you realize you could replace it a shell script that took 30 minutes to write. The point is to get managers to buy something from IBM so they can have push notifications.
- tbyehl 12y agoFunny. I just started @ IBM. Can't run Windows because I have privileged access to systems. Can't BYOD because same. Can't hackintosh because licensing. And officially they don't buy Macs.
- gscott 12y agoSeems like that only leaves OS/2 to use.
- fiatmoney 12y agoSo run Linux; what's the problem?
- aye 12y agoYup, either RHEL or OpenSUSE should fit quite well into the culture.
- tbyehl 12y agoSome weird IBM flavor of RHEL 6.5 is what they gave me. On hardware that is near top-of-the-line and thus poorly supported. I bought a docking station and it was an ordeal just to get it to recognize a monitor attached to the dock. And it crashes on undocking. But the kicker is that my job here revolves around VMware and Windows. VMware's web client needs a newer version of Flash than you can get on Linux outside of Chrome. And Chrome dropped RHEL 6.x ages ago. And every RDP app packed with RHEL 6.x is junk compared to CoRD or RDCMan. If I could BYOD I'd happily go buy a new MBA and IBM could toss it into a Blendtec when I'm done here.
- sespindola 12y agoI'm currently a fellow IBMer. Go to w3, search for "approved OS" and take your pick. I'm currently running fedora 20 with mate desktop. Works like a charm on a T430.
- aye 12y ago> On hardware that is near top-of-the-line and thus poorly supported. Haha, there's got to be a name for that paradox: you want to run Linux on your brand new computer, but the hardware isn't well supported. Do you: a) Settle for a Linux install that sometimes does weird things (on my Lenovo Yoga 2, I have to close the laptop lid and re-open it to get the computer to come back from suspend properly). b) Settle for Windows 8? Unless you've got the time to write your own device drivers, the MBA is the most "rational" choice for a new laptop. (IBM pun not intended.)
- arturventura 12y agoThis is Apple making an attack at Google. Microsoft is a gonner in a few years. Google was ready to take charge of their market with Google apps and cloud services. Apple is gonna make IBM build a cloud base infrastructure with Apple User interface and QA. We are talking very high end costumers, not the typical small or medium corp. No one will be fired for buying Apple and IBM. Google, maybe. Enterprise Cloud was one Horse race for Microsoft market. Now there are two.
- pilsetnieks 12y ago> Microsoft is a gonner in a few years. A bit more than a few years. They still have pretty good profits (Windows and Office are still quite popular,) and even if that dried up suddenly and they had zero revenue, they could quite literally live on their cash reserves for a decade.
- gress 12y agoIf Microsoft goes to zero revenue, their shareholders will have different uses for the cash. Long before that point it will be dismantled. [edit: downvotes, seriously? I'm just pointing out that Microsoft is not a private company that can do whatever it likes with its cash pile if it is not performing. I guess that is uncomfortable for some reason.]
- brudgers 12y agoIBM was already going head to head with Microsoft. Has been for about twenty years. Their quality was already enterprise grade, it's Apple that is trying to make a critical transition - out of the cyclic commodity consumer hardware business and into the more stable B2B markets. The problem for Apple is their secrecy and planned three year obsolescence is unattractive at scale for large businesses. A large part of IBM's continued relevance has been from their shift toward solutions leveraging open source as well as providing customers with clear roadmaps.
- discreteevent 12y agoIBM makes some of the worst front end software in the world. Lotus Notes, Rational Rose, Doors etc. Deeply nested menus, one level of undo, zero to negative OS integration, bugs that never get fixed, unsearchable documentation, bloat upon bloat, everything that gives enterprise software a bad name. I wonder whether Apple will bring IBM up or will IBM bring Apple down on that front.
- Tloewald 12y agoTo be fair, lotus notes was awful before IBM bought it.
- codingdave 12y agoNo, no it really wasn't. It had some well-earned respect, and was innovative. It offered power to the users that was unheard of in those days, allowing them to spin out their own discussions and applications without needing software developers to help out. It clustered, it scaled, it had granular levels of security that still hold up today. It was used to build online communities in the days when dial-up BBSes were the norm. While the UI of its client sucked compared to anything we see today, those were the days of Windows 3.1. Everything sucked back then. It has aged poorly. But it had its place, and its time.
- Tloewald 12y agoReally it was. I used it before IBM bought it and it was awful. Good technology but execrable UI.
- jmspring 12y agoI actually really liked workplace shell in OS/2, though question is - was that the IBM or Microsoft side of the house.
- yuhong 12y agoI think it was done by IBM. As a side note, I think a lot of the memory consumption of 32-bit OS/2 comes from it.
- brudgers 12y agoIs branding driving the bus when what counts as innovation for Apple in 2014 is the iBMPhone? The only way this makes sense is if Apple is planning to purchase IBM because otherwise they are the weaker party in a partnership - phones and tablets and pc's are commodities, big iron boxes and enterprise expertise are not.
- IBM 12y agoIf this were true the Mac wouldn't have just hit 30 years old. Meanwhile many race-to-the-bottom PC OEMs are exiting/have exited the business.
- brudgers 12y agoCorn flakes are 120 years old. Kellogs turns a profit manufacturing them despite their commoditization. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_flakes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_flakes
- 72deluxe 12y agoYeah, but have you seen the "race to the bottom" manufacturers offering their own brand cornflakes? It's certainly driving those big supermarkets out of business! Tesco Value Cornflakes? It's wrecking them! (Only kidding; the market is large enough that different devices can cater for different needs and price ranges. There appears to be a trend to see something new in this industry and proclaim the demise of other businesses due to them not making this new product or offering this new service. It's short-sighted.)
- wmf 12y agophones and tablets and pc's are commodities, big iron boxes and enterprise expertise are not. My impression is the opposite; there's only one iPhone. The whole BYOD thing happened because if you gave employees Blackberries they'd still go out and buy iPhones.
- brudgers 12y ago
- robert_tweed 12y agoThis seems like a very smart move for both parties and is going to massively disruptive effect on the industry. It'll be interesting to see how Google and Microsoft react (especially since Microsoft seems to be finally dragging itself out of the Ballmer dark age). It's a perfect synergy[1], with IBM having dropped hardware some time ago and subsequently, most software, in favour of open-source + prestige R&D + consultancy services. Apple on the other hand, makes some of the best hardware around and turns a good profit doing it, and they also have some of the best software UX (if not necessarily the most powerful solutions). Put the two together and it's an extremely potent combination, as long as they can pull off the collaboration effectively. Apple is already making fairly serious inroads into corporate IT since BYOD became a thing. To a lesser extent, they've been a business brand longer than they've been perceived as purely consumer-oriented, with the design industry being the only thing that kept them alive in the 90s pre-iPod-turnaround. It will also be interesting to see what impact this has on open source, because that's something that IBM currently supports heavily so they can avoid the cost of developing a lot of common business software in-house. This partnership might herald a preference for, for example, Apple servers running OSX, over Linux. A more positive outcome is that we're likely to see significant improvements in Apple software to meet needs that IBM clients will demand: stuff that tends to sit on a dusty shelf for years, like fixing SMB support in OSX, might start seeing some serious engineering investment by Apple. We also might see an end to Apple's "no rollbacks" policy, which IMO is a serious barrier to adoption in corporate environments (and is a huge pain for testing). No IT department worth its salt will ever push out a possibly breaking change like an OS update without a rollback plan, but Apple actively prevents that right now. Either that, or Apple will need to up it's release cycles to match the way SaaS is typically managed and take bug reports more seriously, although probably only when they come through a priority channel reserved for corporate customers, much like how Microsoft handles "unofficial" hotfixes that don't go into Windows update. [1] Apologies for using the word "synergy" but it really is appropriate here.
- jbigelow76 12y agoAnd at the pinnacle of the "perfect synergy" will be the C-levels and execs saying "This <industry specific iOS app> is awesome for my world wide safesforce! Now how do I export all the data to Excel?" This initiative probably has the MS Office 365 marketing people salivating.
- higherpurpose 12y agoI'm surprised so few people or articles mentioned the 1984 ad, and how Apple used to think IBM is the Anti-Christ.
- r00fus 12y agoPeople change, organizations change and the world changes. To survive you must adapt. Why not mention the Microsoft investment in 1997? Or the partnership with Cingular/ATT in 2007? Or were those not really evil empires?
- sjwright 12y agoThat ad worked because customers at the time associated IBM with the impending corporate monolith. IBM was just the whipping-boy for the larger idea. (Much like how today Apple is the whipping-boy for Foxconn manufacturing scandals.) It became apparent soon after that Microsoft was the real threat to Apple's business model.
- Moto7451 12y agoApple and IBM's history of working together on PowerPC from the early 90s to mid '00s is probably why. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_600 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_600
- dba7dba 12y agoI see this as a sign of weakness for Apple. My gut feeling is this is a sign Apple if feeling vulnerable.
- ksec 12y agoIs this only for the Enterprise? ( BTW IBM Notes Sucks ) PowerPC? And the Fab IBM is trying to sell but no one wants?
- fidotron 12y agoIt's like Apple have bought IBM for the grand price of absolutely nothing. All the upside, none of the risk. (Someone in Cupertino was taking notes from the Wall St bailouts . . . ) For IBM this has to be their last shot before sliding off into oblivion, with their resurgence now looking incredibly temporary. All they really bring at this point is customer relationships and service monkeys, with the former being what Apple are really after.
- blazespin 12y agoService monkeys. Lordy. Those service monkeys build the infrastructure that keeps this world together.
- cones688 12y ago> sliding off into oblivion At which point the entire worlds banking and transactional services will grind to halt. I don't think you quite appreciate how much of the world runs on IBM kit.
- mekpro 12y agoI'm not sure this is a good idea for Apple which its root were always based on Consumer product. Steve Jobs hated Enterprise Market. Its fair to believe that Enterprise is an opposite site of Consumer. Their principle of requirement, design or even purchasing decision are very different. You can't please everyone. I wonder how will next i-Devices look like if they are trying to please enterprise rather than the consumer.
- aaronharnly 12y agoI agree that this may be a mistake by Apple, but Jobs didn't hate the enterprise market. He may have hated it for Apple, but it was NeXT's main ambition. For example here's a video of Jobs explaining why NeXT would go after the professional non-scientific workstation market -- lawyers, medicine, database-driven apps. ie the enterprise. http://youtube.com/watch?v=HNfRgSlhIW0 http://youtube.com/watch?v=HNfRgSlhIW0
- josho 12y agoAs I understand it, this is Apple focusing on consumer, while leveraging IBM as a strategic partner to service/support the enterprise market. Without IBM, Apple would have to build up an enterprise sales team or cede that market to Microsoft who has an existing enterprise sales team. So, if this partnership works out it plays to both companies strengths. Finally, Apple has been encroaching on enterprise for years, each iOS update has included enterprise specific features (central management, per app vpn, single sign on to name a few from v7 & 8).
- fleitz 12y agoCan't wait for iOS/2 Armonk with CoreDB2 for iThinkPad.
- matdrewin 12y agoI see very little benefit for Apple. IBM makes complex expensive software that people are still trying to get rid of in the enterprise. Apple doesn't need a sales force for iPads, most top execs have been demanding iPads for the last 2 years already, it's just IT that's slow to adopt it because they fear loss of control with BYOD. Only upside here is stuff like Watson and the likes. I can see IBM providing back-end services to Apple but that's about it.
- ojosilva 12y agoIBM signs juicy hardware + software contacts with large corporations and government around the globe. They don't have a (serious) mobile offering, something their customers are asking for more and more every day to be thrown into deals and EULAs. So now the IBM salesman will have a very sexy Apple brochure in the briefcase to show around. Apple taps into a large, high margin market where 200, 000 devices deals will not be uncommon and without doing much really, no new stores, no new salespeople. The technology behind this is minimal, some security improvements, maybe a Tivoli or Rational plugin. No real disruption here, people, just lots of cash.
- lnanek2 12y agoRight now, if you are an enterprise who is going to give every employee or retail store a device for some reason, you often go Android since it is so much cheaper and can be customized more than slapping a sled with a bar code scanner and a battery on it. This helps make Apple more competitive in the B2B arena. Traditionally they have been good just at getting to consumers.
- tim333 12y agoI think Apple will get to sell a lot more devices without too much effort as the "more than 100 industry-specific applications that will run on the iPhone and iPad" will drive sales. Perhaps not as sexy as an iWatch but it could be pretty profitable.
- blazespin 12y agoAntitrust.
- callmeed 12y agoA lot of people seem to dismiss this as a bad idea, but it makes sense to me. I see it as IBM becoming the "SourceBits for Enterprise Customers" [0]. They just add another zero or two on their hourly rate and package it up into a "solution". Also, the article mentions retail as an initial target industry. Their Websphere platform powers some big ecommerce sites [1]. Now they can go after those customers and sell them mobile retail solutions. Plus it's probably a big F&B for the sales team selling Websphere. I'm sure the same goes for any commercial "products" IBM has for banking/travel/healthcare. Even if they just act as "implementation providers" for 3rd party products, to be able to say "choose us because we will also build you an iPad app for your BIGHealthDataSystem install" is pretty huge. Also, this is great for iOS developers because there will be more jobs available. Hopefully (and I'm reaching on this one), it also means IBM will create/contribute to more open-source iOS/Obj-C/Swift projects and tools. [0] http://www.sourcebits.com/ http://www.sourcebits.com/ [1] https://www.sparkred.com/blog/2013-leading-ecommerce-platforms-for-the-top-100-online-retailers-research/ https://www.sparkred.com/blog/2013-leading-ecommerce-platfor...
- orionblastar 12y agoIBM moved away from X86-X64 hardware, sold them to Lenovo. IBM knows it is the Post-PC and Post-Microsoft era. IBM sees Apple using ARM for mobile devices, and Apple, Motorola, and IBM once were partners in the PowerPC technology. So possible IBM and Apple could make a new series of ARM chips for servers and mobile devices. Apple wants to drop Samsung for ARM chips and other stuff, and IBM could replace Samsung. IBM could make ARM based servers that run OSX Server in a blade configuration for Apple, and Apple can license iOS to IBM for mobile devices, and OSX Server for servers. I figure a new version of OSX called OSX/2 will be made, with puns towards OS/2 that came out of Microsoft-IBM working together. One that is ARM and X64 based and uses some universal binary format to make apps run on both platforms.
- tn13 12y agoSo they are now going to screw blackberry from other side as well. This is a bad news for Microsoft as well.
- tomsthumb 12y agoIs an osx server better for command line admin than the non-server version?
- Moto7451 12y agoAt this point OS X Server is an App you install from the App Store that adds/enables additional functionality and admin interfaces for verious bits of technology. The rest of the OS remains the same.
- orionblastar 12y agoIt seems Apple and IBM have done this before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent
- Daishiman 12y agoPeople here are waaaay overstating the importance of this arrangement. IBM is a services and consulting company, and as such it will sell you anything you want so long as you're willing to pay a service and support contract for it. People are not aware that IBM has about as much in-house knowledge of Solaris and HP-UX as AIX, or Oracle as much as DB/2; customers routinely pay them to support other's software and hardware, and it's a business that works out nicely for them. The only thing this means is that Apple will now be another official partner of IBM, with potentially some more help than usual, but believe me: if customers want IBM to support their app running Android or Windows Phone clients, you're damn sure they'll have that option and will have no issue doing the dance, though they may certainly entice you to use their partner's competition software if they can. But from their core business standpoint, this is no more important than their current experience in using JD Edwards, RIM, Oracle, Cognos, Informix, or any of the other products through which IBM makes billions a year, directly or indirectly. And they would certainly never consider Apple hardware on the desktop for the vast majority of their customers. This is a company with over 300000 employees worldwide, several hundreds of software and hardware partners in every possible IT subdomains, and a direct reach to tens of millions of people. This affects their regular business very, very little, which is still a core niche of banks, insurance companies, governments, military contractors and health care.
- vegabook 12y agoIBM has always pitched availability and throughput for multinational-class computing. This is something Apple has singularly failed at, just look at iCloud which is still sluggish and lacking in robustness. It seems to me that Apple user endpoint (terminal?) hardware with IBM service guarantees and availability in the back end works really well. Also while I agree that this is just another IBM partner, it's quite interesting to see how even the mainstream press is giving this partnership announcement a lot of front page visibility, suggesting it will be noticed by the corporate decision makers too.
- Daishiman 12y agoCorporate decision makers give not two shits about public opinion as far as software go; if that were the case the enterprise software wouldn't have the horrendous, dreadful UIs it has. They surely read the excuses of trade magazines in IT, but those will care more about the next version of Oracle Financials or .NET with the same or more importance than a partnership with Apple. Honestly, this is popular just because it suck ups to Apple fans who feel they have something to prove by Apple's involvement in the enterprise.
- vfclists 12y agoMy enemy's enemy is my friend, until he also becomes my enemy, which happens sooner or later
- CurtMonash 12y agoThis is ratification that iOS devices have an important presence in enterprises, which may be important to the three people in the industry who hadn't yet realized that. Otherwise, it's business as usual -- IBM customers have a need that has something to do with IT, IBM puts together an offering to address it.
- resca79 12y agoNow Apple has to produce a new spot about IBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zfqw8nhUwA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zfqw8nhUwA
- JimmaDaRustla 12y agoIBM will devour their money, just hope that the resulting product is worth it.
- jaegerpicker 12y agoI think a lot of people are missing the point here. If you look at Apple's big push into new markets (Healthkit) and the mobile market direction (possibly towards wearables) which have a huge upside when paired with a high quality health data collection market. So Apple is moving to a good position in the front end of the coming health care aware wearables market but that's not nearly as valuable as having one of the hugest backend healthcare services providers as a close partner. IBM is a huge health care cloud provider, I'm pretty sure they are the largest in fact. So imagine an end to end health care data solution, Apple controlling the actual devices and health kit based software clients and IBM gathering and storage/analysis services in the cloud. It's a huge market in the US alone and a fantastic way for Apple to gain a large chunk of the wearables market, with a better integrated end to end solution. I have no inside info but I can't imagine that Apple isn't thinking of this as a move going forward.
- bsg75 12y agoDoes this mean the DB/2 on the Mac will finally reach version parity with Linux? (I am not kidding)
- qq66 12y agoApple isn't doing anything that unusual here. Hardware doesn't have to be "consumer" or "enterprise" -- your PC at home and your PC at work aren't that different. It's software and sales that are very different between home and work -- IBM will layer "enterprise" software and sales models on top of Apple hardware and both players should make money.