10 Important Facts to Know About the IBM-Apple Alliance

10 Important Facts to Know About the IBM-Apple Alliance

IBM Intends to Resell Apple Mobile Devices

IBM will most likely make those devices available via its business partners, as well as its direct sales force. The devices will come loaded with applications the two companies develop.

IBM Adds AppleCare to Portfolio

The deal presents a new service and support opportunity for IBM partners, who, by extension, will get to resell Apple service.

Mobile Apps to Be Developed Using Apple Tools

The goal is to build applications that run natively on Apple platforms. The two programming languages used to develop these apps are Objective-C and Swift.

Next-Gen Apple Mobile Devices Will Create Content

Currently, most Apple mobile devices are primarily used to consume content, but future devices will be used to create it as well. The line between tablets and PCs gets blurrier by the day.

IBM Bluemix Emerges as a BaaS Platform

The value of IBM’s $2 billion Softlayer acquisition increases substantially. IBM envisions using Bluemix running on IBM SoftLayer as a backend-as-a-service (BaaS) platform that exposes RESTful APIs.

IBM Worklight Mobile App Dev Platform Gains Momentum

IBM acquired Worklight to build mobile applications in 2012. The battle with Oracle and SAP for control of emerging enterprise mobile platforms will intensify.

IBM Big Data Analytics Provides Key Differentiator

Mobile is now a distribution channel for analytics. The goal is to embed access to big data analytics inside mobile apps.

Governance and Security Become a Service

Partners will see emergence of APIs to invoke governance and security services exposed via IBM Bluemix cloud. By leveraging IBM CloudMix, the two companies will secure iOS in the enterprise

Apple Siri Meets IBM Watson

One would presume this integration is inevitable—that IBM Watson speech recognition chats up Siri on Apple devices.

Mobile First Means Re-engineering Enterprise Apps

Most enterprise apps operate in batch mode. Mobile applications generally require a real-time response from enterprise apps.