Your post all seems to be very consumerist. IBM sells servers. Apple does not sell servers. IBM sells their own server hardware. IBM dropped their x64/x86 servers recently.
Apple makes consumer hardware, IBM makes expensively marked up enterprise hardware.
IBM makes TERRIBLE software, apple makes shiny consumer stuff, the absolute most that will come out of this is sametime and or notes getting a small bit more attention from IBM on iOS products. Most of IBM's crap is a thinly veiled customisation on top of Eclipse, it makes me laugh thinking about how that will translate to an iOS device. IBM's server side software, while marginally better - what apple hardware is that going to run on?
IBM clients couldn't give less of a hoot about samba shares in OSX. This news will have approximately zero effect.
IBM doesn't even make their own servers anymore - selling that business to lenovo (IBM only makes mainframes).
I assume this is relatively neutral for both parties, and reflects the deterioration of technical competence at IBM.
IBM will act as a giant sales arm, and apple would fulfill whatever contract IBM can land. only question is how big the scale they can accomplish together. you would think IBM enterprise is naturally large scale but not necessarily justifying largest-market-cap-in-the-world. apple's still going to need major consumer hits to keep growing.
Apple has $574bn market cap last check, to IBMs $190bn. Apple would almost need to acquire IBM to move the needle, and selfishly, as an apple-convert, i hope they aren't actually considering that.
would be a true shame for apple to stop building the consumer products of our dreams, to build some soul-less bullshit for "enterprise" courtesy of IBM. risk of the great dream dying.
also big risk of the IBM culture and mindset infecting apple.
i'm sure steve jobs would get a huge kick out of apple throwing a lifeline to IBM, thinking back to the 80s when IBM was "big blue" and a formidable technology competitor.
i could see steve going ahead with this for kicks, which is about how i think apple is going to approach it. can't harm apple if they ring-fence the work, and don't let IBM management practices become apple practices.
Can Apple support the cloud analytics needed to process the large amount of human-generated, personal sensor data for the many enterprise verticals that will be transformed by this data?
IBM has invested in "Smart City" initiatives, urban-scale control and coordination. Pick your favorite sci-fi movie. There is potential here to marry the personal operating system (Apple) and the city-state operating system (IBM).
Earlier this year, IBM adopted an ARM-like approach to their Power architecture, licensing IP to "OpenPower" partners. For example, here's a $4.88 billion joint project on servers & software for smart cities in China.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-07/14/c_1334823...
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The joint project with Chinese firm Sichuan Huaxun Zhongxing Technologies Co. Ltd follows their announcement on May 18 that they will build a service center dedicated to the big data and cloud computing that is necessary for smart cities.
... "Cooperation with IBM will have an immense impact on the construction of smart cities in the world and fast-track the R&D level of high-end servers in China by 10 to 20 years," said He Wenjun, chairman of Huaxun Zhongxing Technologies.
The smart city concept was invented by IBM.
In 2012, China selected over 130 cities as pilot sites for a smart city program that will explore ways to foster a new type of urbanization.
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No. Which is why they are looking to IBM to condense this "big data" on the server side and stream it to the iOS devices.
http://www.cringely.com/2014/06/04/decline-fall-ibm/ http://www.cringely.com/2014/06/10/analyzing-ibm-analytics/ http://www.cringely.com/2014/06/15/ibm-back-ussr/
It is OK to think that way re hardware. But it is backwards re software. IBM sold off almost all their hardware divisions (laptops, printers, storage) because they make their money on services. IBM is basically a consultancy nowadays. IBM is doing what they do here: selling software consulting services and solutions that run on Apple. Apple isn't going to do any development work for this at all.
Lately I've been heavily involved in a project[1] that tries to improve this situation - sort of a next generation Notes based on CouchDB, with fully relational data models, extremely fast development cycles and upcoming mobile+offline clients. Mid-term we want to offer interfaces to Notes/Domino, such that migration becomes a matter of hours per application. I'm curious to see, how IBM wants to solve the inability of Notes to be fully integrated onto iOS - their announcement didn't even mention it, it rather seems like they want to sell you expensive consulting months to create each application from the ground up using their cloud platforms. Cost-wise this will be multiple orders of magnitude off of what we're trying to offer.
+1
This deal is just a press release. I imagine that an enterprise willing to pay up for Apple hardware, is not the kind of enterprise to settle for vendor-lock in mediocrity in software, while the PHB's buying enterprise class mediocrity from IBM will not pay up for Apple hardware.
I wonder how many reports Jony Ive has to him compared to his equivalent number in IBM.
This initiative probably has the MS Office 365 marketing people salivating.
The trick is to allow the analysis to happen within the app, and not as vlookups and pivot tables in Excel (as the user is more comfortable with).
Ultimately, this is Microsoft's failing as Excel should have become a cloud/server-powered think-desktop/tablet app a long time ago with versioning and multi-user support. Sure that existed back in the late 90s with ODBC and data links, but it was too fragile and was not significantly improved in the decade and a half since.
http://edu-kinect.com/blog/2014/06/23/microsoft-brings-hadoo...
Some documents that I've prepared in Excel with complex (meaning not all that complex) don't come into Numbers properly (a stacked bar with one series as a line, for example).
It's not just the macros but 100s of little things that break compatibility.
If you use Numbers with Excel for anything but the most basic spreadsheet list you are going to have a bad time.
Its something of a stereotype but generally Excel to "something else" is less painful than old Excel to new Excel.
What Apple and IBM have really done is join an ongoing movement, something that has been going on for years. People already have these iPhones in their pockets, these iPads on their desks, and they very naturally have been integrating them with their life-and-business processes.
Sure, Google would love to have the IOS cache, but this deal more reinforces IOS market dominance than "disrupts" it, the leader.
It's not even a technical change for Apple... the same devices, used in the same way (I think they'd fail brand-damaging if they tried to suddenly be "enterprise", you need "dirt under your fingernails" as Cook said).
However... the imprimatur of IBM will open the floodgates for all those enterprise VP waiting for a sign that it's time to switch. (Just as the IBM PC did for personal computers?). Suddenly, the herd of VPs will place orders, each massive in their own right, overwhelming even Apple. That's the budget that previously was allocated to desktops/laptops...
So, in a market sense, this is arguably the key to the disruption. And looking back, the moment the dam breaks might well be seen as the disruption (rather than the warning drips and trickles). Certainly the most consequential.
It shows up over and over again, but its a failure of reasoning: on average no one uses any specialized software on a desktop, just a web browser and spreadsheet. But the average is not a real person to start with. All the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of bits of custom code people use to do their jobs do not easily translate to locked down mobile environments. Heck, ask anyone using Excel for a lot of work: there's more VBA out there that's utterly vital then anyone would care to admit.
If Apple aren't breaking into enterprise with Macs, they're not going to somehow manage it with iOS except in the same space they always have.
Agreed tablets won't replace desktop completely - just as desktops didn't replace mainframes completely.
I imagine a normal distribution, over how much PC functionality is needed, by how many people. On the left, people who hardly need a PC - they've already switched to mobiles. Then the middle, the average, where they need a spreadsheet/word processor (to varying degrees). Finally, on the right, tapering off into specialized domain software (including your VB scripts), CAD/CAM, simulation, desktop publishing, animation, visualization etc. This is the long tail you mean, where each person requires a different subset of functionality.
There'll be a process of adoption, step-by-step, left-to-right, which eventually will get stopped (perhaps at spreadsheets?). The question is whether IBM can create apps that really do meet their customer needs well enough to displace desktops. There are many roles where they can.
And if we look at degrees of usage, perhaps if some role only needs occasional spreadsheet access, they might have one PC in the office (instead of one on each desk). Or, rearrange job roles so specialist does that. Or, perhaps google spreadsheets are "good enough" for their use. Or maybe some specialised app, with their exact subset of functionality will rise to the fore - that will actually be better for their specific use, because customized to it... today, software is far cheaper to build than when spreadsheets became standardized and ubiquitous.
One last data point: it could be that iPads become desktops. Add a keyboard and mouse and a stand... This isn't disruptive of the usage, just of the supplier!
The data point is that that's how I use my phone, with a bluetooth keyboard. I'm using it now. I do most of my programming and ssh on my phone now. It is awkward in some ways (mainly, the bt keyboard sucks), but mostly is more convenient than my desktop.
So maybe this isn't really "opening the floodgates" as I first said, just the beginning of a trickle, as IBM starts to displace desktop usage in the enterprise, role by role.
Besides this being just a traditional PR move by both companies (Apple doesn't have traction in the enterprise market, except for CEOs wanting the IT dept to support their iPhones -- and IBM doesn't have traction in the consumer market, nothing could be more boring than IBM products), this is two companies with cultures on opposite extreme sides of the spectrum.
Ol' Stevie would probably be very angry.
I don't think IBM wants to sell _both_ a corporate data initiative and a new phone at the same time.
iOS with a small i is Apple's OS for their devices.
They went to court over the difference, so it is important (to them at least :-)
In those areas, and many other corporate enterprise areas, Apple is on is already on its way out, specifically because they never really integrated or put any special effort on integrating with the existing corporate infrastructure.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has used this time that Apple squandered to finally catch up for the most part.
A lot of large corporations gave Apple a chance 5 years ago and nothing ever really came of it. They will not be getting another chance any time soon.
Samsung's Knox Platform is likely going to bring a lot more competition to bear, particularly now that Google has partnered closely with them - so things are certainly going to heat up soon.
Does that mean 90%+ issue Apple devices to some employees? Or simply support (or tolerate? Or turn a blind eye to?) using them on the corporate network and/or corp email? Or something in between?
Corporates tend(ed) to use Blackberry for their management / key people. Those people tend to use Apple and Android for personal use.
(Big) Corporates tend to use IBM for data intensive / traditional mainframe roles (transaction processing, etc). Big ticket stuff.
(Big) Corporates tend to use Exchange. Great chance to cross-sell a now internal product, Blackberry, which was already approved by information security obsessive corporates. But Blackberry is unpopular, BBN its only selling point.
IBM now say 'Apple is OK too, we trust them'. Said executives now demand an iPhone / iPad app, which in reality was already developed 2-4 years ago, but only distributed to people in information security / in-the-know because they really wanted it and could get it. As Apple can now be cross-approved on the same terms as IBM, vendor approval is easy.
Not release a cooperation agreement, but this has been in the works for several years. Apple gain a lot. Not sure what IBM gain... perhaps cloud agreements with Apple? Perhaps support agreements, perhaps something much bigger?
"The Good Dynamics Secure Mobility Platform currently manages iOS, Android and Window Phone devices, so these are the only platforms included in the report. BlackBerrys, for example, are managed via BlackBerry Enterprise Service/Server (BES) or directly via Microsoft Exchange; as such, they're not represented in Good's report."
"Talking specifically about tablet activations, iPads made up 91.4 percent of all activations, while Android represented just 8.6 percent of tablets activated by customers."
Apple has already been doing a lot of work over the last couple of years geared towards making iOS more acceptable to enterprise and we're clearly going to see even more progress in that direction.
Say what you will about the quality of IBM's software and services, IBM probably understands enterprise-scale IT better than anyone else. A lot of that knowledge is now going to be transferred to Apple, as iOS and the related infrastructure is brought up to the standard that IBM clients will demand for this to work.
Cringely is very clear about the charades IBM is playing to maximize the short term buck.
It's a perfect synergy[1], with IBM having dropped hardware some time ago and subsequently, most software, in favour of open-source + prestige R&D + consultancy services. Apple on the other hand, makes some of the best hardware around and turns a good profit doing it, and they also have some of the best software UX (if not necessarily the most powerful solutions). Put the two together and it's an extremely potent combination, as long as they can pull off the collaboration effectively. Apple is already making fairly serious inroads into corporate IT since BYOD became a thing. To a lesser extent, they've been a business brand longer than they've been perceived as purely consumer-oriented, with the design industry being the only thing that kept them alive in the 90s pre-iPod-turnaround.
It will also be interesting to see what impact this has on open source, because that's something that IBM currently supports heavily so they can avoid the cost of developing a lot of common business software in-house. This partnership might herald a preference for, for example, Apple servers running OSX, over Linux.
A more positive outcome is that we're likely to see significant improvements in Apple software to meet needs that IBM clients will demand: stuff that tends to sit on a dusty shelf for years, like fixing SMB support in OSX, might start seeing some serious engineering investment by Apple.
We also might see an end to Apple's "no rollbacks" policy, which IMO is a serious barrier to adoption in corporate environments (and is a huge pain for testing). No IT department worth its salt will ever push out a possibly breaking change like an OS update without a rollback plan, but Apple actively prevents that right now. Either that, or Apple will need to up it's release cycles to match the way SaaS is typically managed and take bug reports more seriously, although probably only when they come through a priority channel reserved for corporate customers, much like how Microsoft handles "unofficial" hotfixes that don't go into Windows update.
[1] Apologies for using the word "synergy" but it really is appropriate here.