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This 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 Micro

This 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 ago
And 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.
- r00fus 12y ago
  It's quite easy to export moderately sized data sets to xlsx. The trick is to allow the analysis to happen within the app, and not as vlookups and pivot tables in Excel (as the user is more comfortable with). Ultimately, this is Microsoft's failing as Excel should have become a cloud/server-powered think-desktop/tablet app a long time ago with versioning and multi-user support. Sure that existed back in the late 90s with ODBC and data links, but it was too fragile and was not significantly improved in the decade and a half since.
  - mistermann 12y ago
    Some of the capabilities they have now with PowerView/PowerPivot/Hadoop are technically impressive. http://edu-kinect.com/blog/2014/06/23/microsoft-brings-hadoop-to-cloud-with-hdinsight/ http://edu-kinect.com/blog/2014/06/23/microsoft-brings-hadoo...
- threeseed 12y ago
  Numbers (Apple's spreadsheeting software) is with the exception of macros fully compatible with Excel. And like Office 365 is also online.
  - Mister_Snuggles 12y ago
    Not quite. Macros are probably the biggest thing that's missing, but there are others. Some documents that I've prepared in Excel with complex (meaning not all that complex) don't come into Numbers properly (a stacked bar with one series as a line, for example).
  - yardie 12y ago
    I'm a daily users of Numbers and I can say unequivocally it is not quite close enough. They get 90-95% percent of it right. It's that last 5% that always give me headaches when I export an xlsx. It's not just the macros but 100s of little things that break compatibility. If you use Numbers with Excel for anything but the most basic spreadsheet list you are going to have a bad time.
throwawayaway 12y ago
I've worked with IBM. Your post all seems to be very consumerist. IBM sells servers. Apple does not sell servers. IBM sells their own server hardware. IBM dropped their x64/x86 servers recently. Apple makes consumer hardware, IBM makes expensively marked up enterprise hardware. IBM makes TERRIBLE software, apple makes shiny consumer stuff, the absolute most that will come out of this is sametime and or notes getting a small bit more attention from IBM on iOS products. Most of IBM's crap is a thinly veiled customisation on top of Eclipse, it makes me laugh thinking about how that will translate to an iOS device. IBM's server side software, while marginally better - what apple hardware is that going to run on? IBM clients couldn't give less of a hoot about samba shares in OSX. This news will have approximately zero effect.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- lmg643 12y ago
  I am surprised that no one has mentioned the recent cringely book on IBM, which I learned about from HN. IBM doesn't even make their own servers anymore - selling that business to lenovo (IBM only makes mainframes). I assume this is relatively neutral for both parties, and reflects the deterioration of technical competence at IBM. IBM will act as a giant sales arm, and apple would fulfill whatever contract IBM can land. only question is how big the scale they can accomplish together. you would think IBM enterprise is naturally large scale but not necessarily justifying largest-market-cap-in-the-world. apple's still going to need major consumer hits to keep growing. Apple has $574bn market cap last check, to IBMs $190bn. Apple would almost need to acquire IBM to move the needle, and selfishly, as an apple-convert, i hope they aren't actually considering that. would be a true shame for apple to stop building the consumer products of our dreams, to build some soul-less bullshit for "enterprise" courtesy of IBM. risk of the great dream dying. also big risk of the IBM culture and mindset infecting apple. i'm sure steve jobs would get a huge kick out of apple throwing a lifeline to IBM, thinking back to the 80s when IBM was "big blue" and a formidable technology competitor. i could see steve going ahead with this for kicks, which is about how i think apple is going to approach it. can't harm apple if they ring-fence the work, and don't let IBM management practices become apple practices.
jjindev 12y ago
While I defend "disruption" as a thing, that happens sometimes, I don't think this is it. What Apple and IBM have really done is join an ongoing movement, something that has been going on for years. People already have these iPhones in their pockets, these iPads on their desks, and they very naturally have been integrating them with their life-and-business processes. Sure, Google would love to have the IOS cache, but this deal more reinforces IOS market dominance than "disrupts" it, the leader.
- robert_tweed 12y ago
  I don't mean that this move in itself will be disruptive in that sense, but rather that it is going to force the rest of the market (including the current leaders, especially Microsoft) to do disruptive things to compete.
- hyp0 12y ago
  Yes, it's the "ongoing movement" to mobile that is disruptive. This agreement is just part of it. It's not even a technical change for Apple... the same devices, used in the same way (I think they'd fail brand-damaging if they tried to suddenly be "enterprise", you need "dirt under your fingernails" as Cook said). However... the imprimatur of IBM will open the floodgates for all those enterprise VP waiting for a sign that it's time to switch. (Just as the IBM PC did for personal computers?). Suddenly, the herd of VPs will place orders, each massive in their own right, overwhelming even Apple. That's the budget that previously was allocated to desktops/laptops... So, in a market sense, this is arguably the key to the disruption. And looking back, the moment the dam breaks might well be seen as the disruption (rather than the warning drips and trickles). Certainly the most consequential.
  - XorNot 12y ago
    Sorry, but this all depends on an assumption I question: "normal people don't really need desktops". It shows up over and over again, but its a failure of reasoning: on average no one uses any specialized software on a desktop, just a web browser and spreadsheet. But the average is not a real person to start with. All the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of bits of custom code people use to do their jobs do not easily translate to locked down mobile environments. Heck, ask anyone using Excel for a lot of work: there's more VBA out there that's utterly vital then anyone would care to admit. If Apple aren't breaking into enterprise with Macs, they're not going to somehow manage it with iOS except in the same space they always have.
Cacti 12y ago
There are a lot of places that cannot or will not, and might never support, BYOD. In those areas, and many other corporate enterprise areas, Apple is on is already on its way out, specifically because they never really integrated or put any special effort on integrating with the existing corporate infrastructure. Meanwhile, Microsoft has used this time that Apple squandered to finally catch up for the most part. A lot of large corporations gave Apple a chance 5 years ago and nothing ever really came of it. They will not be getting another chance any time soon.
- robert_tweed 12y ago
  The whole point (in the short term at least) of teaming up with IBM is to sell iOS devices by the hundreds or thousands to enterprise clients that might otherwise not accept BYOD. Apple has already been doing a lot of work over the last couple of years geared towards making iOS more acceptable to enterprise and we're clearly going to see even more progress in that direction. Say what you will about the quality of IBM's software and services, IBM probably understands enterprise-scale IT better than anyone else. A lot of that knowledge is now going to be transferred to Apple, as iOS and the related infrastructure is brought up to the standard that IBM clients will demand for this to work.
- ghshephard 12y ago
  I'm not sure what industries you work in, but it's Apple that, in the last 5 years, has made inroads into corporations that 5 years ago wanted nothing to do with them, and were completely dedicated to their blackberries. I assure you, for better or worse, those corporations have not replaced their blackberries with windows phones or android systems, and in the tablet division, there is only one player, the iPad. Good Technologies shows that Apple now has north of 90% penetration in Fortune 500 companies. Samsung's Knox Platform is likely going to bring a lot more competition to bear, particularly now that Google has partnered closely with them - so things are certainly going to heat up soon.
  - e28eta 12y ago
    I'm always curious about the 90%+ numbers. Does that mean 90%+ issue Apple devices to some employees? Or simply support (or tolerate? Or turn a blind eye to?) using them on the corporate network and/or corp email? Or something in between?
jmspring 12y ago
Relying on IBM for enterprise support? My expectation is they will not be able to live up to the level of quality expected when Apple's name is attached. Much like HP, IBM has outsourced a lot of their support arm and companies I know who had moved their IT support to HP are now bringing it back in house. I expect the same pattern would hold if one adopted IBM. Cringely is very clear about the charades IBM is playing to maximize the short term buck.

jbigelow76 12y ago

And 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.

r00fus 12y ago
It's quite easy to export moderately sized data sets to xlsx. The trick is to allow the analysis to happen within the app, and not as vlookups and pivot tables in Excel (as the user is more comfortable with). Ultimately, this is Microsoft's failing as Excel should have become a cloud/server-powered think-desktop/tablet app a long time ago with versioning and multi-user support. Sure that existed back in the late 90s with ODBC and data links, but it was too fragile and was not significantly improved in the decade and a half since.
- mistermann 12y ago
  Some of the capabilities they have now with PowerView/PowerPivot/Hadoop are technically impressive. http://edu-kinect.com/blog/2014/06/23/microsoft-brings-hadoop-to-cloud-with-hdinsight/ http://edu-kinect.com/blog/2014/06/23/microsoft-brings-hadoo...
threeseed 12y ago
Numbers (Apple's spreadsheeting software) is with the exception of macros fully compatible with Excel. And like Office 365 is also online.
- Mister_Snuggles 12y ago
  Not quite. Macros are probably the biggest thing that's missing, but there are others. Some documents that I've prepared in Excel with complex (meaning not all that complex) don't come into Numbers properly (a stacked bar with one series as a line, for example).
- yardie 12y ago
  I'm a daily users of Numbers and I can say unequivocally it is not quite close enough. They get 90-95% percent of it right. It's that last 5% that always give me headaches when I export an xlsx. It's not just the macros but 100s of little things that break compatibility. If you use Numbers with Excel for anything but the most basic spreadsheet list you are going to have a bad time.

throwawayaway 12y ago

I've worked with IBM. Your post all seems to be very consumerist. IBM sells servers. Apple does not sell servers. IBM sells their own server hardware. IBM dropped their x64/x86 servers recently. Apple makes consumer hardware, IBM makes expensively marked up enterprise hardware. IBM makes TERRIBLE software, apple makes shiny consumer stuff, the absolute most that will come out of this is sametime and or notes getting a small bit more attention from IBM on iOS products. Most of IBM's crap is a thinly veiled customisation on top of Eclipse, it makes me laugh thinking about how that will translate to an iOS device. IBM's server side software, while marginally better - what apple hardware is that going to run on? IBM clients couldn't give less of a hoot about samba shares in OSX. This news will have approximately zero effect.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
lmg643 12y ago
I am surprised that no one has mentioned the recent cringely book on IBM, which I learned about from HN. IBM doesn't even make their own servers anymore - selling that business to lenovo (IBM only makes mainframes). I assume this is relatively neutral for both parties, and reflects the deterioration of technical competence at IBM. IBM will act as a giant sales arm, and apple would fulfill whatever contract IBM can land. only question is how big the scale they can accomplish together. you would think IBM enterprise is naturally large scale but not necessarily justifying largest-market-cap-in-the-world. apple's still going to need major consumer hits to keep growing. Apple has $574bn market cap last check, to IBMs $190bn. Apple would almost need to acquire IBM to move the needle, and selfishly, as an apple-convert, i hope they aren't actually considering that. would be a true shame for apple to stop building the consumer products of our dreams, to build some soul-less bullshit for "enterprise" courtesy of IBM. risk of the great dream dying. also big risk of the IBM culture and mindset infecting apple. i'm sure steve jobs would get a huge kick out of apple throwing a lifeline to IBM, thinking back to the 80s when IBM was "big blue" and a formidable technology competitor. i could see steve going ahead with this for kicks, which is about how i think apple is going to approach it. can't harm apple if they ring-fence the work, and don't let IBM management practices become apple practices.

jjindev 12y ago

While I defend "disruption" as a thing, that happens sometimes, I don't think this is it. What Apple and IBM have really done is join an ongoing movement, something that has been going on for years. People already have these iPhones in their pockets, these iPads on their desks, and they very naturally have been integrating them with their life-and-business processes. Sure, Google would love to have the IOS cache, but this deal more reinforces IOS market dominance than "disrupts" it, the leader.

robert_tweed 12y ago
I don't mean that this move in itself will be disruptive in that sense, but rather that it is going to force the rest of the market (including the current leaders, especially Microsoft) to do disruptive things to compete.
hyp0 12y ago
Yes, it's the "ongoing movement" to mobile that is disruptive. This agreement is just part of it. It's not even a technical change for Apple... the same devices, used in the same way (I think they'd fail brand-damaging if they tried to suddenly be "enterprise", you need "dirt under your fingernails" as Cook said). However... the imprimatur of IBM will open the floodgates for all those enterprise VP waiting for a sign that it's time to switch. (Just as the IBM PC did for personal computers?). Suddenly, the herd of VPs will place orders, each massive in their own right, overwhelming even Apple. That's the budget that previously was allocated to desktops/laptops... So, in a market sense, this is arguably the key to the disruption. And looking back, the moment the dam breaks might well be seen as the disruption (rather than the warning drips and trickles). Certainly the most consequential.
- XorNot 12y ago
  Sorry, but this all depends on an assumption I question: "normal people don't really need desktops". It shows up over and over again, but its a failure of reasoning: on average no one uses any specialized software on a desktop, just a web browser and spreadsheet. But the average is not a real person to start with. All the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of bits of custom code people use to do their jobs do not easily translate to locked down mobile environments. Heck, ask anyone using Excel for a lot of work: there's more VBA out there that's utterly vital then anyone would care to admit. If Apple aren't breaking into enterprise with Macs, they're not going to somehow manage it with iOS except in the same space they always have.

Cacti 12y ago

There are a lot of places that cannot or will not, and might never support, BYOD. In those areas, and many other corporate enterprise areas, Apple is on is already on its way out, specifically because they never really integrated or put any special effort on integrating with the existing corporate infrastructure. Meanwhile, Microsoft has used this time that Apple squandered to finally catch up for the most part. A lot of large corporations gave Apple a chance 5 years ago and nothing ever really came of it. They will not be getting another chance any time soon.

robert_tweed 12y ago
The whole point (in the short term at least) of teaming up with IBM is to sell iOS devices by the hundreds or thousands to enterprise clients that might otherwise not accept BYOD. Apple has already been doing a lot of work over the last couple of years geared towards making iOS more acceptable to enterprise and we're clearly going to see even more progress in that direction. Say what you will about the quality of IBM's software and services, IBM probably understands enterprise-scale IT better than anyone else. A lot of that knowledge is now going to be transferred to Apple, as iOS and the related infrastructure is brought up to the standard that IBM clients will demand for this to work.
ghshephard 12y ago
I'm not sure what industries you work in, but it's Apple that, in the last 5 years, has made inroads into corporations that 5 years ago wanted nothing to do with them, and were completely dedicated to their blackberries. I assure you, for better or worse, those corporations have not replaced their blackberries with windows phones or android systems, and in the tablet division, there is only one player, the iPad. Good Technologies shows that Apple now has north of 90% penetration in Fortune 500 companies. Samsung's Knox Platform is likely going to bring a lot more competition to bear, particularly now that Google has partnered closely with them - so things are certainly going to heat up soon.
- e28eta 12y ago
  I'm always curious about the 90%+ numbers. Does that mean 90%+ issue Apple devices to some employees? Or simply support (or tolerate? Or turn a blind eye to?) using them on the corporate network and/or corp email? Or something in between?

jmspring 12y ago

Relying on IBM for enterprise support? My expectation is they will not be able to live up to the level of quality expected when Apple's name is attached. Much like HP, IBM has outsourced a lot of their support arm and companies I know who had moved their IT support to HP are now bringing it back in house. I expect the same pattern would hold if one adopted IBM. Cringely is very clear about the charades IBM is playing to maximize the short term buck.