“Apple is looking to hire individuals across the US for a team of IBM Business Development Executives that ‘will be accountable for all aspects of the Apple and IBM partnership for a defined geographic and account set territory,'” Jordan Kahn reports for 9to5Mac.
“That means Apple is hiring a team of individuals that will act as company liaisons to help roll out and oversee sales teams pushing the new Apple/IBM iOS solutions to enterprise customers,” Kahn reports. “The positions, which are industry and region-specific, also show Apple’s plan for the upcoming expansion of its enterprise solutions for new industries including manufacturing and healthcare.”
Kahn reports, “Currently the company is hiring for the position in Seattle and LA for the Healthcare & Retail industries, in New York City for the Financial Services & Retail industries, and in Dallas and Chicago for Manufacturing and Retail.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Apple+IBM: Apple spoils early, Big Blue’s later? – February 2, 2015
Apple+IBM seize the mobile moment to energize enterprise software – December 29, 2014
Apple and IBM: The new enterprise IT – December 11, 2014
This will be more important than the iWatch, but will get little press. The demise of Blackberry is leaving a big hole that is just beginning to open. Enterprise is large market, with deep pockets, and very loyal. It is a three way race between Apple, Microsoft, and Samsung to fill it. If Apple wins the iPhone will become the professional phone. This will increase Mac, iPad, and even iWatch sales.
iPhone already has massive penetration in the corporate market as everyone is abandoning BlackBerry in droves. The battle is all but won.
As anything pertaining to Apple, I had read a few negative criticisms about those first 10 IBM apps that were released in December of last year. They had something to do with those apps being too simple to be of any practical use. Don’t ask me why? I thought those particular apps are being tailored for a specific use but I it had to do with them being much less powerful than some desktop applications that would be designed for Windows. You know how that usually goes. If it doesn’t run on Windows, business solutions can’t truly be good enough for corporations or whatever. It just goes along with the general thinking that tablet or smartphone apps are half-baked solutions.
There was also some talk about IBM no longer being the go-to company for business solutions. I just thought I’d mention that not everyone thinks the Apple/IBM partnership will be a success. The partnership had barely started but the critics are quick to jump on anything Apple does being prone to failure.
Those Microsoft Windows techs, they really are scared shitless. They stand to lose big time when the Apple-IBM guys get things up and running.
Can’t wait to see the poor bastards buying Apple hardware and begging for work.
What not many on the Apple sites are talking about (when they get motivated to talk about Enterprise stuff at all as WetFx noted) is just how badly IBM needs this to work.
They’re in a literal free fall that’s been coming for years of misdirection and increasing competition. And after some previous “downsizing” up to 25% of their workforce has butts on the line right now.
Apple has all the bargaining and leadership power in this relationship. That is, it’s true that penetrating IT thru IBM’s century old back door could help ensure they can keep overcoming the “law of large numbers” which posits that there’s a ceiling on how much and how rapidly the biggest corporations can grow for a good number of years to come.
So I’m sure Cookco wants this to happen, as in why wouldn’t they? Huge growth in areas already well within their core competencies and major new demand for existing products as well.
Also, once a real choice for IT departments, the idea of an A9 or A10 Mac that wouldn’t need a lot of on-board storage on corporate networks and which corps could afford to roll out in the tens of millions begins to look like a possible scenario as well.
But it’s not like Apple’s hurting without this happening immediately and have plenty of growth opportunities left – in world markets for existing products, and for new ones in the pipeline.
For IBM, OTOH, Apple’s buzz and UI chops are perhaps not only their best, but maybe only remaining shot at staying relevant in the markets they’ve created and owned for longer than most of you have been alive.
So I really think they’re going to push this alliance hard with the idea of hanging on Apple’s extended coattails for dear life.
More about the condition IBM is in: http://www.cringely.com/2014/10/27/fix-ibm/
And if you look at this list of Big Blue’s problems you’ll notice that Apple could be instrumental to re-mediating them in a number of ways.
There’s an emotional basis for the “relationship” as well. First, both Apple and IBM have previously faced near-death experiences at the hand of Microsoft’s scorched earth tactics of previous decades. And keeping Google/Android/Chrome from taking up the slack is very much in both company’s strategic interest.
Plus the two companies have a history of working together in reasonably amicable ways, even if all the projects eventually weren’t enduring winners on their own.
(The partnership is also in now chastened and newly cross-platform Microsoft’s interest as well. If Chrome takes over the Fortune 1000 desktop as the “appliance computer,” Google Docs wins. If IT goes more for a mix of Mac and Win 10 machines, Office hangs on to a healthy share.)
So this is really a possibly consequential matter. Either Apple busts down a wall and motors into the middle of Enterprise computing, or once and long mighty IBM becomes an old soldier fading away.
Stay tuned….