Apple Teams Up With IBM To Make The Enterprise Push In Mobility

Acquisition and merger deals of various proportions have been the talk of the town this year and with its latest arrangement, Apple has taken itself into the enterprise/business arena, pitting itself against established brands like BlackBerry.

After buying out music brand Beats earlier this year, the iPhone maker has now formed an alliance with computer major IBM in order to counter BlackBerry’s well stocked armoury of enterprise products and services.

According to the arrangement in place, IBM will be entrusted with building a new line of enterprise-specific apps specifically meant for Apple’s iOS platform which is seen running on iPhone and iPad. The said app ecosystem will be primarily targeted at the retail, health care, transportation and other industries.

In addition to that, IBM will create ‘unique cloud services’ for iOS, including tools for security, analytics and device management. Interesting aspect about the partnership is that its ‘exclusivity’ factor that gives Apple the impetus to create state-of-the-art enterprise experience for its business consumers without worrying about the possibility of IBM changing partners or vice versa.

This deal might come across as a challenging element for BlackBerry, who have righteously owned the enterprise business space for many years and offer them to reinvent and innovate on their product and services themselves. With IBM, Apple will be able to leverage the company’s data mining expertise and enhance its portfolio with products that move beyond devices, Mac OS and iOS.