“Apple and Cisco recently confirmed they will be working even more closely together,” Jonny Evans writes for Computerworld. “I caught up with two key Cisco executives to learn a little more about the two company’s plans.”
“At root, Cisco and Apple are opening up new opportunities that transform iOS into the key platform for collaboration and unified communications,” Evans writes. “Discussing these improvements, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins told me via email: ‘We are really excited about the deeper partnership between Cisco and Apple. The whole idea behind the work we’re doing together is to simplify the user experience.'”
“News that Cisco and Apple intend to support each other from a security standpoint was also so important,” Evans writes. “They now claim that together they provide “the most secure combination of anybody in the enterprise.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Oh, to see the looks on the faces of the assorted anti-Apple IT doofuses we had to deal with at companies large and small in years gone by!
Have Apple build a GUI for Cisco Routers.
Sadly, we all know that Apple will never have a place in the enterprise. Cisco gives Apple a “Trojan horse” path.
Millions of next generation Cisco Systems VOIP office phones will have the patented macOS feature where you can open your Mac while talking on your iPhone and hand off the call to your Mac seamlessly. Put that capability in an enterprise VOIP phone and everyone will want a shiny new Cisco phone with a “Mac inside” sticker..
(look at the bottom of your desk phone. Probably a Cisco).
There is no reason (or lack of money) Apple should not cozy up to Enterprise and help to provide identical software tools available on Windows. So then as every IT doofus raises his finger up in Mac migration protest he pauses and stops cold with the usual line of reasoning fallen and slithers away.
I am not a fan of iOS – as a Mac user I just find it frustrating and irritating.
However, in the enterprise, iOS makes a lot of sense for task-specific jobs where a dedicated iOS app can make data capture and retrieval simple and quick. Just as iOS on an iPad makes it easy for waiter to take orders at a restaurant, warehouse employees can use a made-to-order app to front-end SAP or another mainframe-based system to do stock takes, flag out of date stock or other tasks which used to require a clipboard and pen.
Just don’t try and tell me that an iPad can replace a Mac for general business use. It might be getting closer but it’s still deficient in many areas and editing a large document with a finger is never going to cut it.
Anyone ever used Cisco equipment in server rooms, telco’s or data centres?
Their stuff is ugly, ugly, ugly. And over-complicated. It doesn’t try to hide its guts from users, meaning that (without serious training) its extremely difficult to work with in any meaningful way unless you’re a total Cisco systems guru.
No wonder they’re so “excited” for Apple to come in and give them some input on UI, UX and security.
Anyone who’s worked on Mac OS X Servers or managed switches on Cisco networks will know exactly what I’m talking about.
One can’t help feel that the only reason Cisco are suddenly interested is because of Apples’ wonderful iPad which works so beautifully with live data on huge Citrix/SAP/IBM/Oracle databases and is so easy to write good, solid apps for.
It’s good that it’s finally happening but it’s very late in the day, given that Cisco could’ve/should’ve taken advantage of iPads years ago.
If Apple engineers can simplify Ciscos’ hideous, complex interfaces and operating systems then I, for one, will be mighty grateful.