Apple and Deloitte today announced a partnership to help companies quickly and easily transform the way they work by maximizing the power, ease-of-use and security the iOS platform brings to the workplace through iPhone and iPad. As part of the joint effort, Deloitte is creating a first-of-its-kind Apple practice with over 5,000 strategic advisors who are solely focused on helping businesses change the way they work across their entire enterprise, from customer-facing functions such as retail, field services and recruiting, to R&D, inventory management and back-office systems.
Apple and Deloitte will also collaborate on the development of a new service offering from Deloitte Consulting called EnterpriseNext, designed to help clients fully take advantage of the iOS ecosystem of hardware, software and services in the workplace. The new offering will help customers discover the highest impact possibilities within their industries and quickly develop custom solutions through rapid prototyping.
“We know that iOS is the best mobile platform for business because we’ve experienced the benefit ourselves with over 100,000 iOS devices in use by Deloitte’s workforce, running 75 custom apps,” said Punit Renjen, CEO of Deloitte Global, in a statement. “Our dedicated Apple practice will give global businesses the expertise and resources they need to empower their mobile workforce to take advantage of the powerful ecosystem iOS, iPhone and iPad offer, and help them achieve their ambitions, while driving efficiency and productivity.”
“As the leader in digital transformation strategy, Deloitte is an ideal partner that brings a team of Apple-dedicated strategic advisors to help clients truly revolutionize how they work using iOS, iPhone and iPad,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, in a statement. “iPhone and iPad are transforming how people everywhere get work done. And through this partnership, we’re able to help even more businesses tap into the incredible capabilities that only the Apple ecosystem can deliver.”
EnterpriseNext from Deloitte Consulting will provide businesses with expertise spanning more than 20 industries, and offers customers:
• EnterpriseNext Value Maps for iOS to help them discover the highest impact possibilities for iPhone and iPad within their industries, align their mobile opportunities and prioritize digital resources
• EnterpriseNext Workshops for iOS to quickly take ideas from prototype to custom-built iOS solutions
• iOS architects, designers and engineers housed within Deloitte Digital Studios around the world — to help produce easily deployable, high-quality native apps that integrate seamlessly with existing business platforms including ERP, CRM, analytics and HR
For more information regarding the Apple and Deloitte partnership, visit deloitte.com/apple/ or apple.com/ipad/business/.
Sources: Apple Inc. and Deloitte Consulting LLP
MacDailyNews Take: Apple means business™.
BTW, IT doofuses, we told ya so, 10 days before Apple sold their first iPhone:
The IT guys are in for a rude awakening and the iPhone is only the beginning. They will have to accommodate the iPhone. Too many important employees will demand it and IT won’t be able to stem the tide. The fact is that business people will decide which device they want to carry and their businesses will adapt to it. Just as they did with “Microsoft-incompatible” Research In Motion’s Blackberry. Apple’s iPhone will be a success with business users whether the IT guy wants it or even whether AT&T and Apple tailor marketing to businesses or not.
Note to CEOs: Who runs the company, you or the IT guy? It’s your job to make the decisions and it’s the IT guy’s job to implement your decisions that relate to technology. Just as with Macs, you need to educate yourself instead of relying on someone with their own, possibly hidden, agendas to make extremely important technology decisions for your company. Most of you could be saving a LOT of money right now, but you aren’t because you’ve delegated an important part of your company’s decision-making to people who, frankly, in our experience, aren’t capable of making good, sound, strategic, long-term decisions. Most IT guys (and we know many) are not open-minded enough to be able to consider new, better, more efficient, more effective options that would benefit your company. In fact, most IT guys we’ve met will throw up road blocks and repeat myths until they’re blue in the face in order to avoid change. Especially change that might make their department less critical or smaller. Bottom line: most of you CEOs have given the IT guy way, way, way too much power. It’s time to take it back. — MacDailyNews, June 19, 2007
love your prediction by the way!!!
Apple’s iOS will evolve into one of many tools that enterprises use for communication. It is absolutely not the only one necessary to run a business. Apple can’t even run its own business on its own technologies, what does that tell you?
MDN, you seem to buy the kool aid that CEOs are all-knowing savants who can make clairvoyant technical decisions. They are not. A CEO, despite the insane compensation thrown at them, are only as good as the executive team supporting him/her. That team notably includes a CTO, the “IT Guy”, who almost invariably is given hard budget constraints that prevent a massive change away from the entrenched tools.
Change costs money. You want an all-Apple office, please explain how that saves money in the short term or the long term. iOS currently works great for phones. It’s useless for collaboration work at an enterprise level.
It’s so easy to throw CTOs under the bus when you have zero experience in business.
Gee. Thanks a lot MDN.
It is my experience, BTW, that it is the CEO who opposes the iPAD along with other key management personnel and employees. Even after you demonstrate that the device can handle most if not all business functions, they remain highly skeptical of a very expensive but under powered device that they have to learn to use.
Having suffered through “management consultants” from the then Deloitte and Touche, color me skeptical.
Deloitte impressed me as a bunch of bullshit artists. Ever see House of Lies?