Given that I used to work for Apple and have lately been quite critical of IBM, readers are wondering what I think of Tuesday’s announcement of an iOS partnership of sorts between Apple and IBM. I think it makes good sense for both companies but isn’t a slam dunk for either.
There are three aspects to this deal — hardware, apps, and cloud services. For Apple the deal presents primarily a new distribution channel for iPhones and iPads. Apple can always use new channels, especially if they hold inventory and support customers who aren’t price-sensitive. Apple’s primary goal is to simply get more devices inside Big Business and this is a good way to do that.
The apps will all be developed by IBM but will still sell through the App Store and will have to meet Apple’s quality standards. I guarantee you meeting those standards will be a problem for IBM, but that’s not Apple’s problem. In fact as far as I can tell Apple has few if any resources deployed on the app side so for them it’s almost pure profit. Who can argue with that?
Cloud services for iOS are more complex and problematic. I’m doing a whole column shortly on IBM’s cloud strategy so I won’t go too deeply into it here, but let me point out a couple things. Apple has more data center space than does IBM, so it’s not like Cupertino needs IBM’s cloud capabilities. Apple is also a customer of Amazon Web Services, the largest cloud vendor of all. These facts suggest to me that this aspect of the deal is where fantasy hits reality. IBM wants iOS cloud services, not Apple. Big Blue dreams of iOS cloud dominance and they expect it will be fairly easy to accomplish, too. After all, they have a contract!
But to Apple the cloud services are just a necessary expense associated with getting device distribution to IBM’s customers. If no cloud services actually appear or if they do appear but are useless, Apple won’t care. Same, frankly, for the IBM apps.
This isn’t the first time Apple and IBM have worked together. In the dark days of John Sculley Apple created with IBM two software partnerships — Taligent and Kaleida. Taligent was supposed to do an object-oriented and very portable operating system but ended up doing some useful development tools before being absorbed completely into IBM. Kaleida Labs did a CD-oriented media player that was superceded by the Internet and died within three years. I had friends who worked at both concerns and told me of the culture clashes between Apple and IBM.
This new partnership will turn out differently from those. Apple will sell a ton of iPads and iPhones and IBM will make some money from that. IBM business apps will be less successful but there may be a few that appear. iOS cloud services from IBM won’t happen. More on that tomorrow.
The result will be that Apple wins and IBM doesn’t lose, but neither company will be seriously affected by the other. It’s just not that big a deal.
I guess I don’t understand the Apple product distribution channel aspect of this. Seriously, the IBM sales force is going to move enough iPhones and iPads to have any kind of effect on Apple’s bottom line? I’m missing something here.
IBM will push their customers to standardize on Apple phones and tablets which could mean ten of thousands of both types going to a typical IBM customer. That’s not nothing. And Apple will benefit from all the other apps those corporate users download, not just those from IBM. It’s easily the equivalent to Apple of, say, Target.
This sounds good on the face of it. I do wonder how well IBM – especially the broken IBM you’ve been writing about lately – will be able to integrate its new Apple apps with its old mainframe infrastructure.
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I agree this seems to be an easy win for Apple (or at least no loss), while IBM has some serious creative work to do to get its own win out of this.
IBM is not as “broke” as you purport it to be. It has some aces up its sleeve: https://www.wired.com/2014/08/ibm-unveils-a-brain-like-chip-with-4000-processor-cores/
it’s reported elsewhere that IBM is committing up to 100,000 employees to the effort.
that’s like the old banner over the entrance to the DEC-Atlanta cube farm, “Everybody Sells.” not everybody sells effectively, or well.
so if this is going to be much of a positive, first task is everybody at IBM gets a shiny new iPhone 5s, and maybe tablets for the sales guys for their swooping, dancing demos. second task is to get them to use them effectively and continuously.
at least two quarters, maybe a year, before this does much for either bottom line. except maybe for ATT, because this probably adds 110,000 customers for wireless. that’s a blip that might be picked up.
I think Bob is again right. Apple has had no real sales force at all so far.
They have relied on “fashion” and “hype” to push their sales as well as reasonably high tech products and innovation.
Now they are badly slowing down and need something more … sales oriented.
IBM has (still) some (declining) seriousness reputation in pro sales.
IBM will just be a channel to Apple. Nothing more, probably.
Apple will be just another supplier. But a really goood one.
The real challenges for both companies will be:
1. to train the sales force with a type of product IBM has never dealt with and
2. to train product marketing with a sales force Apple never had.
I am really looking forward to see this movie!
“Apple has had no real sales force at all so far”
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You left out “…in enterprise.” And that’s been intentional. They’ve instead had a razor-sharp focus on sales to consumers, where they have a huge number of employees selling and supporting massive amounts of Apple products (and third party accessories) via their physical Apple Stores and online storefront. In that regard, they make more money per square foot than any other retail business in the world. I believe they also make more money per employee than any other retail business in the world (I’m not as certain of that).
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These sales are not “badly slowing down,” they are growing. The addition of Angela Ahrendts from Burberry to head Apple’s physical and online retail efforts fills a hole in their team that’s been vacant since October 2012. With a proven executive again dedicated to this effort there will surely be a renewed push in this area and an acceleration in Apple’s retail strategy.
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Then even in spite of just focusing on retail and the consumer market, Apple has only been growing their presence in the Fortune 500. They currently count 98% of it among their customers, with barely any effort in that direction at all.
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As for sales and product marketing training, this is one of the least of the challenges. Apple has always had clear messaging about their product benefits and value proposition. IBM’s sales teams will probably breathe a sigh of relief at how much easier it is to get the message across about these products than those from other vendors.
Totally agree. Although time will be the real proof, as Apple gets a bigger and more official (IMB support) foot in the enterprise door, it means less Windows, less Android.
Hmmm, if companies move away from Microsoft and find that they can do just fine, why would they go back to…. say windows 8, or 8.1, or 9, or what ever????? PS, For the last 5 years, all Macs have the ability to run Windows……. Buy one computer get two. Just saying here.
I think Cringely is wrong. I think this will be the start of another big move away from Microsoft, this time in business. Yes companies have Apple gear…. but not a lot of it. If this changes that direction, Microsoft… watch out. Ice burg ahead!!!
“Apple has had no real sales force at all so far.”
Apple’s sales force (Apple Store employees) is over 40,000…
“Now they are badly slowing down”
What are the numbers that justify this claim?
I think Bob is so superficial it’s hilarious. He’s obsessed with “Cloud” as if there was such a thing. Take a look at businesses around you. IPads are everywhere replacing PCs and old POS equipment. Even Microsoft recognises that and now has office and onedrive on IOS. IBM is in the business of building and implementing business applications. Not selling acres of lousy Intel MIPS. For IBM’s business applications folk (GBS) to remain relevant they need to incorporate mobile into their applications. Now they have the manufacturer of the best mobile devices as a partner and as blundering Bob says Apple have a new very significant route to market. Bob needs to try and understand what Cloud is for himself, he really doesn’t get it. It doesn’t matter where an app runs, centrally, distributed, on the edge, whatever. It should run where it best serves the business requirement, be that on mainframe, an intel server, an Amazon datacentre, a PC, a tablet, a phone or a ruddy watch. That’s the future not all this waffle about “cloud” this and “cloud” that. It’s only a fashionable ill defined term currently being used for a trends that started decades ago.
I don’t know what Bob said to make you think he disagrees with what you said about where apps should run. But it’s clear to me from experience that they work better, assuming equal hardware availability, when they don’t require internet connectivity. A slow, flakey, or otherwise unreliable connection to the app, makes it useless. Ask any YouTube or Netflix subscriber. Just last night, Seth Meyers made a joke punch line, merely by moving his hand in a circle, no words required.
Just yesterday I was writing that in the future Apple will form a strategic partnership where there’s no downsides to Apple. This qualifies.
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If this fails Apple will suffer no significant material loss. After the AIM alliance in the early ’90’s, and then in the late ’90’s Apple depending on Microsoft’s Office software to preserve the validity of Macs for productivity, as well as Adobe’s software to preserve their validity for creativity, Apple will absolutely not allow the company’s destiny to be tied to or depend on anyone else.
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Others on the net (Twitter) had some great comments about this:
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asymco: “You can’t get fired for buying IBM has now become you can’t get fired for buying Apple.”
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BenBajarin: “Given the importance of IBM as the closest thing to an enterprise standard today, this is a huge blow to Android and Windows tablets/phones”
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asymco: “24×7 [on-site] support for iOS by IBM; supply and management; activation; leasing as an option. This makes iOS the default option for mobile.”
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panzer: “Oh yes, and Apple + IBM is also something else very important. It is a thing that wall street understands.”
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Then myself (LunaticSX): “Remember Google’s IO announcement about integrating Samsung KNOX to make Android more appealing to business? Haha. :)”
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Also, so much for “You can’t do real work on iPad”!
“Apple created with IBM two software partnerships — Taligent and Kaleida.”
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It’s strange that you neglect to mention the other partnership Apple and IBM had, which was actually successful: The Apple-IBM-Motorola (AIM) alliance that developed the PowerPC processors out of IBM POWER multi-chip RISC architecture.
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Of course less successful than that was PReP, the PowerPC Reference Platform. As Apple wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about that, it evolved into the Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP), with the addition of Open Firmware and some elements of Power Macintosh architecture. This too suffered from a lack of interest from Apple and also never really went anywhere in the end.
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“iOS cloud services from IBM won’t happen.”
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Yeah, Apple’s surely not going to shift any of their own cloud services to IBM, but IBM’s iOS apps will no doubt make use of IBM’s own cloud services back end.
Great Perspective, it would be great to see such an alliance exist again, especially with IBM’s new processor: https://www.wired.com/2014/08/ibm-unveils-a-brain-like-chip-with-4000-processor-cores/
Do you know that apps will go through the app store? That seems the wrong way to do it. IBM wants to deliver a crate or three full of preconfigured IOS devices at a few thousand dollars apiece plus a service contract. They can’t do that so easily if the apps are acquired separately.
Apple would get a premium+ price, plus ongoing fees for its 24/7 device support. All of that needs to get bundled into a big honkin’ IBM invoice.
Paradise Pete.
I think apple will be pretty firm on the all software going through the App Store.
If I remember correctly there are aome significant chanhe conning re bundling if software and corporate sales in ios8 which will make this much easier to manage.
Apple has allowed enterprise mobile device management systems to deploy non-App-store apps to iOS devices since, IIRC, iOS 4.0. Whatever the version, it’s been several years now.
“…aome significant chanhe conning”. Touch keyboard problems, perhaps?
IBM is a complex, messy, and very often dysfunctional place, but I have to say, this Apple and IBM partnership gives me some real hope for improvement. First, IBM has made cloud services the cornerstone of our (yes, IBMer here) software group strategy. One of the big questions that I am asked on a regular basis by our customer base is “Do you have native ios applications?”, and now we have the Apple seal of approval. Even if we deliver less than stellar apps that tie in to provide reporting and visual information from enterprise applications hosted on the cloud, IBM gets the benefit if the doubt from our corporate buyers because of this Apple partnership. And things on this front are actually preety promising. We have a few young executives who are actually driving some really exciting and (dare I say it) sexy applications for the enterprise. We already have some good looking native ios apps, and I am cautiously optimistic that we will have more great things developed on this platform.
Next, having this sort of loud, very public announcement unifies a big, lumbering and more often than not chaotic salesforce in a focused direction. Ginny is making it clear that cloud is important and getting the data into the hands of the end user is something that we now have better direction on. I guarantee that there are 1000’s of IBM software sellers thinking last night how they would refine there message to include this Apple pitch — I know I was.
I am a contractor to Fiberlink, a leading, (in my professional opinion), the BEST MDM (Mobile Device Management) company. I enjoy hearing what is going on, although I am not privy to non-disclosure information, but certainly get public information shared with me.
This is a great deal between IBM and AAPL, and IBMs acquisition of Fiberlink in December’ish of 2012 shows they are thinking and planning for mobile in a big way.
Glad to hear comments from an IBMer that is so positive.
I have zero vested interest in IBM, (I hold Apple), but I am very positive on what will develop here.
Friends who are in the corporate world had in the past complained that they couldn’t get an iPhone because only BlackBerry would connect in to the Exchange server. I believe Exchange was Microsoft?
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Apple never really seemed to take the corporate world seriously. Who can blame them when it’s filled with low-end Dell PCs?
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So my question is what will IBM offer which is business focused that Apple can’t do? How does IBM see the fit? Do they have an equivalent of Exchange that needs integration with iOS? What about office productivity software, do they have an alternative to Word and Excel?
You are miserably misinformed: the iPhone works with MS Exchange server every bit as well as a Blackberry does. The only thing a Blackberry works better with are their own BES servers.
IBM loves have “bullets” to put on its customer presentations. It was once said IBM’s Office Vision was a product that only ran on an overhead projector. It sounded great in a presentation. It never existed as a product or a collection of code. A slide with the words “mobile, apps, , cloud, iPhone, Apple partnership” will help IBM proudly sell itself. IBM will win not from actually creating anything, but from having these words in a customer presentation that helps them win more business. This is pure perception and marketing for IBM, smoke and mirror salesmanship at its finest. When you see the first presentations and commercials IBM will have won too.
I’m not so sure Big Blue App sales would go through the App store. If IBM didn’t want to sell the apps via “retail”, they could develop them and simply cross-load them directly, as part of their management & maintenance bundle of services to the client.
Apple’s B2B App Store, or just plain Enterprise installations after some consulting followed with some bespoke development.
Apple now has APIs (MDM) that enterprises can use to control company-owned iDevices as well as load and control profiles on employee-owned devices. So IBM internal IT would set up a “WatsonAppStore” (they get a cert from Apple to do this — which might be a point of failure if there’s ever a falling-out) that would allow employees and customers to download IBM enterprise apps. And not have to pay the 30% “Apple Tax” on app sales.
With Samsung on the ropes, profits down 25%, I think this move is perfect for Apple. Really, Samsung’s preparing to fight Apple with new hardware and Apple throws a them a sucker punch to the jaw with this annoucement. Perfect way to keep your competitor off balance and off focus.
[…] IBM and Apple just not that big a deal […]
It looks like someone in IBM read your book, Chapter 10, The Mobile Solution. Does this count towards your 2014 predictions? I think your recommendations to fix IBM are great. I doubt IBM’s exec’s will read your book. Its their loss. That chapter could be a gold mine to the company.
So as you well know, data center space that Apple has does not equal cloud. Furthermore, I am seeing an awful lot lately from startups that begin with Amazon but as they grow quickly realize that they can do stuff quicker, cheaper and more reliably themselves, and they “in-source” what they had deployed on AWS.
It will be interesting to see how this unfolds. Being a long-time Motorola loyalist (what can I say, it’s an emotional thing) I was of course teased by a colleague that I would have to abandon my beloved Droid for an iPhone.
Therein lies an interesting problem. The smartphone market is a mix of Apple, Android, a bit of Microsoft, and a tiny bit of a few others. Apple and Android make up most of the market. There are things one could do to make both work much better in a corporate setting. It will be interesting to see who figures it out first — Apple, Google, Microsoft, or IBM? My bet is Microsoft. They know they are behind and are increasingly desperate to get established in the market. It looks like IBM is trying to buy its way into relevance. I don’t think they really understand what is needed yet. It’s sad. They really should read chapter 10 of Bob’s book. IBM invented the smart phone and missed being a part of a new multi-billion dollar industry. IBM’ers — READ BOB’S BOOK — CHAPTER 10.
“… IBM invented the smart phone…” and Microsoft invented the tablet PC. 🙂
Prior to leaving last year, I had downloaded a half dozen IBM apps, all of which were centered around area’s of expertise in the area in which I worked. There was not a single one that was used more than twice. Enduring the whacked up loadset on one’s PC and experiencing the wonders of ISSI are nothing short of a nightmare. Since leaving there, going from a fully loaded i7 to an i5 Thinkpad with half the ram has responsiveness and performance about double what I saw on the IBM loadset. Another topic is the business analytic’s software that was run against the RA list last year. The results to say the least were laughable and embarrassing. This agreement won’t change any of that. 100% agree with Bob, this aint’ no big deal.
My guess is this was timed to create a distraction for what is on the docket tomorrow, Thursday July 17th. Eeeeek, it’s IBM earnings time again, what better way to get a bump in the stock price via this Apple announcement just before the train goes off the track on Thursday.
Great comments. I will grant you that execution on IBM’s part is the greatest unknown here. Perhaps writing these apps from the ground up to run on iOS will fix many of the problems? (Ha!)
At the outset this has to suck all the oxygen out of the room for Google and Microsoft. The corporate world will be scrutinizing this venture very closely.
This seems like a great matchup. Apple is the gold standard for mobile hardware and software and support. IBM lives in the enterprise market and clearly sees the shift to mobile by its customers. By cooperating you bring together the strengths of each with virtually no negatives. It will take two years to see how this pans out. Two years till they write the apps and get the sales and install the software to a sizable user base. In two years we’ll be looking at iOS 10, iPads running the A10 processor. The capabilities of the hardware and OS will be huge. This is a great time for IBM to hook up with Apple.
Can IBM execute? One thing that gives me hope is that Tim Cook is personally involved in this. Tim has twelve years experience at IBM and he is as good as it gets at execution. You have to imagine that he has considered this problem and has some idea that it can be fixed. We’ll know in two years.
Well, first, IBM does announce quarterly earnings tomorrow. And if Cringely is correct about the company imploding, then earnings should be down again. So IBM management, wihich is all about short term gain for the stockholders, would want an Apple/IBM alliance as a way to keep the stock price up despite the bad news. Or what if this is about a merger of Apple management and IBM’s potential earnings if it is ever well run? That is, an Apple takeover of IBM.
Apple needed a stake in the Artificial Intelligence/Deep Learning game – something IBM provides.
Google has Geoffry Hinton.
Facebook has Yann LeCun.
Baidu has Andrew Ng.
Microsoft has Adam.
Now Apple has Watson.
I see this as the most important aspect of the partnership.
AI will soon yield the biggest advantages and Apple didn’t want to be left behind.
This smacks to me of distraction. Announced 2 days before IBM’s 2Q results, I’m expecting plenty of “but look, over there …” when they are announced. To the suits, this will prove that IBM’s plans are working, and Wall Street will doubtless buy in to it too. As for the practical effects, well, we won’t see any positive ones (if any for the real IBM) before Death March 2015 has taken its final toll.
From what I read in the standard punditry, this is Good Night, Blackberry. I’m not sure about that any more than I am that IBM has a clue about how to execute this new GTM strategy with Apple. IBM will have sales reps tripping over themselves trying to sell this. But IBM’s biggest hardware customer is Lenovo, who buys IBM in division-sized chunks (/rimshot).
What is the incentive for a customer to source Apple hardware from IBM? Will there be a discount? Unlikely. Will it come pre-bundled with apps? Possibly, but if apps are accessible through the App Store, then so what? BYOD is a real thing, so it’s not like it’s in IBM or Apple’s best interests to prohibit an existing enterprise iPad or iPhone user from loading up the apps directly.
This feels for all the world like a swing for the fences by IBM. They’re trying to bask in the warm glow emanating from Cupertino. I’d wish them luck, but they wouldn’t know what to do with it if they had any.
Great post! I agree with everything you wrote.
BYOD was IT giving in to demand, it was not a strategy. The idea of this partnership is to provide a solution to companies that need to work with mobile devices.
What do you do if you have 500 sales people needing iPads? Wait for them to buy them on their own? What if they all choose different apps for PDF readers, calendars, etc.? How do you recover corporate data if someone leaves the company or loses an iPad or has it stolen? How do you provision a new employee with an iPad and know that they have all the apps and data they need? We’ll see if IBM can execute properly, but there is clearly a need for this kind of service.
“Cloud services for iOS are more complex and problematic. … Apple has more data center space than does IBM, so it’s not like Cupertino needs IBM’s cloud capabilities. … IBM wants iOS cloud services, not Apple. ”
IBM is selling different things from Apple. For example, Apple sells you access to YOUR iCloud account, with its 5GB of storage and the ability to upgrade to a few tens of GB more. IBM sells you access to a CORPORATE cloud which multiple people can access, with different credentials and different permissions, and with vastly more storage involved than a single iCloud account.
Claiming these two are in tension is idiotic, like claiming that if I spend time on the NYTimes web site that’s somehow competing against my spending time on the Facebook web site.
Beyond this, the deal isn’t all one-sided. I know Robert likes to beat up on IBM, and much of that may be well-deserved, but IBM still have some very interesting strengths that are useful to Apple. For example, Apple is very weak in Machine Learning and everything related to that. Siri somehow interfaced to Watson could be very interesting… Pretty much the same issue is that Apple is very weak in translation which is going to be a very hot field over the next few years. Again, IBM is a reasonable fit. Similarly for computer vision.
Likewise, Apple have done a great job with their ARM core so far, but the next steps, while less sexy, are perhaps harder. They have to abandon a bus architecture for a Network on Chip architecture (a step Intel took with Nehalem), they need a modern L3 cache scheme with non-uniform cache architecture (data physically moves from one L3 cache slice to another to be closest to the CPU/GPU using the data), they need an optimized memory controller, they need a hardware transactional memory system. All IBM strengths.
The best sorts of partnerships have both partners with something to offer, and both partners realizing their weaknesses. I think in this case both partners ARE in that position.
Machine learning … I think that’s Apple’s real game here. The so-called “Internet of Everything” is not quite here, but it’s coming quickly. Very large, very well-known companies across the spectrum of industries are making big bets on what the future holds. Apple wants a piece of that and why wouldn’t they? IoT is as much informed by consumer behaviors as corporate ones. Apple may or may not give one rat’s behind about the corporate side of things, but they absolutely want in on the consumer space and any new business opportunities it creates.
Machine learning is one thing IBM does reasonably well (they have a coherent story to tell at least). It’s also true that it’s corporations that will drive what machines actually do in addition to the data they collect and manipulate. I’ll bet Apple wants more than a fair share of that pie.
I am a retired IBM’r as of December 31,2013 of my own volition. I couldn’t take it anymore. The company is so top heavy it is disgusting and very disheartening. They are micro managing to the nth degree and have no interest in what the troops have to say or share. So….
CLOUD – what a joke. Cloud is nothing more than a bunch of systems talking to each other. Just a different name on the same ole business. Remember the pen-tablet? Of course not. It was a big flop when it was announced. How about TiVo (I am not disparaging just making a statement)? It never took off. But the execs plod on with the holier than thou attitude and complete disregard for the people that make up the company. The workerbees have been trying to tell the execs they are making a big mistake but no one is listening. So, they stir, not shake, their gin and tonic, pat themselves on the back, and think everything is peachy keen. Well… I suppose it is at the top.
This Apple/IBM/Apple deal sounds like a desperate move to me. Don’t get me wrong. I left because I couldn’t take it anymore. However, I need them to be successful because I need my measly pension to be paid for as long as I live. But, I just don;t see how IBM will benefit from any of this. Apple will probably benefit from this. IBM? I don’t think so.
Can’t help feeling that this is my staid boring uncle getting on the dance floor to bop with the kids. But then maybe it is showing a willingness to change. Maybe this is part of the transformation we’ve been promised for the last 5 years (which has always so far resulted in more process, more control, less initiative).
I can’t see IBM as a phone salesman, I can see us producing massive, slow, buggy apps with poor user interfaces; and if I’m wrong there then why do we do it with our current software offerings? IBM has managed to hide its inability to write good code behind corporate deals that deliver poor products and then charge to fix them. If we go direct to the public then we won’t have that last silk handkerchief to cover our embarrassment
@UK technical IBMer. Having had to support some of that middleware I had severe doubts about the code quality. However, the recent PowerPC hardware visualization capabilities are a powerful corporate inducement to stay with IBM, if the hardware tech support is good. Also assuming the advent of Linux containers does not take off. As it is, I think IBM has 2 years to have a big compelling reason to stay with AIX, before FOSS makes propriety Unix capabilities seem too expensive.
Looking at this another way, what are the implications for old Microsoft and old IBM in the current maybe post PC world? I think Steve Jobs has another post-death win here as Apple go back into corporate sites, metaphorically snapping fingers at a struggling Microsoft/Bill Gates. Even death is not stopping Steve in his competition with Bill via the companies they helped found and shape. Whether the software is going to be tolerable for the users, let alone add value to business is another matter. For Apple, Bob is right, little risk but good profit potential for a while.
For IBM, I see only wishful thinking. For Nadella, another round of slideware to generate. What is the betting either Apple and Microsoft buy the other out in 5 years ? I reason M$ plan will not do well because of the assumption that most of the world has adequate networking. Outside of big cities this is debatable, even in much of the developed world.
IBM has a portfolio of great developments, products and services for Big Data!!! However, IBM does not know how to integrate and provide a unified and user-oriented interface. Apple is excellent at providing such an interface and services through the iPod Touch, iPad, and iPhone devices.
Apple+IBM is therefore a formidable combination that benefits the large enterprises — Boeing, Exxon, GE etc.
My previous comment is based 34+ years of working for an a very large global enterprise in the area of transforming business processes and systems from an end-user point of view!!!
My previous comment is based 34+ years of working for a very large global enterprise, in the area of transforming business processes and systems from an end-user point of view!!!
Microsoft stabbed both IBM and Apple in the back (OS/2 and Windows). From the point of view of Apple, Eric Schmidt was Google’s Trojan Horse.
Now, Apple+IBM combination provides a top-to-bottom Information Systems Environment that makes Microsoft and Google irrelevant in Large Enterprises.
An Apple+HP combination will provide s similar environment for medium-sized enterprises, while Apple covers the small businesses and enterprises.
[…] + IBM and Apple Just Not Big a Deal […]
I suggest a re-read of “Accidental Empires” by Robert X Cringely to the followers of this blog!!!
This is one of the overall best comment threads I’ve ever read. Many, many good points and insights. My 2 cents:
This is a bigger win for Apple than Cringely thinks. To repeat some points above, it kills the “Apple’s not for the enterprise” trope. It’s a big blow to Google, Microsoft, and Samsung. It will sell who knows how many hundreds of thousands of devices, directly and indirectly (“I’ll buy what I use at work”). It gives Apple access to Watson and other IBM tech. And while all the talk is of iOS, it’s easy to see OS X benefiting. There are already lots of MacBooks in the enterprise. Overall, there is very little downside for Apple.
For IBM, it is bit of a desperation move, but why not hook up with the richest and most popular kid around? There’s far more upside potential than downside. Based on what Cringely and others write about IBM, their execution of this may be flawed, but I find it hard to imagine that they won’t create iOS apps that are at least decent. They could learn a lot from Apple, and perhaps their current straits may motivate them to change in the ways they need to.
[…] X. Cringely” similarly offered a dim view of IBM’s business apps and flatly predicted that “iOS cloud services from […]
I think you’re a little off on the cloud services. There are thousand of companies using or wanting to use cloud services and can’t use public cloud providers like Amazon, etc. (although Amazon has recently starting providing some private cloud offerings) These companies are being assisted by IT services companies like IBM, HP(EDS), Accenture, Dell(Perot Systems) in building their own private cloud solutions as well as industry specific solutions.
And imagine all of the other system integrator solutions that IBM will be working on…everywhere there’s a PC, there’s a sales opportunity for IBM to re-architect with and iPad and iPhone. Everything from factory floor, to hospital, to airline maintenance, banking and insurance….it’s all ripe. I worked in that space for 30 years and was involved in those very efforts.
I think this is huge and benefits both parties. It legitimizes Apple as an IT “standard” solution, and gives IBM an edge in the marketplace as the only authorized Apple integrator.
The question is…can IBM deliver what it’s touting? I think they are appropriately motivated by the market need and opportunity.
But how does IBM compete with other cloud providers like Microsoft and Amazon? Not to mention other big players. Does IBM offer something as good or better than Azure?
There are lot’s of cloud platforms and there are strategic standards (and now products) that allow you to run on multiple cloud providers as well as your own cloud platform that you build yourself. Most cloud providers base their technology on linux. Microsoft’s Azure is a viable alternative, but it’s far from a market leader. I’ve been retired for two years so I’m not current, but as an example, IBM could be working with Bank of America to create a private BoA-cloud that runs in Bank of America data centers that are in Texas and Virginia. Or IBM could host that dedicated, private cloud in an IBM data center, or heck, they could even run it in a SoftLayer data center, an acquisition from 2 years ago I think…although a SoftLayer solution wouldn’t really be used for a client like Bank of America.
And then to tie in the Apple portion, imagine all of the various Bank of America ATM service techs running around with iPads/iPhones instead of laptops to do ATM service, or loan officers assisting customers, or any of the other thousands of bank workers…
[…] X. Cringely” similarly offered a dim view of IBM’s business apps and flatly predicted that “iOS cloud services from […]
[…] X. Cringely” similarly offered a dim view of IBM’s business apps and flatly predicted that “iOS cloud services from […]
I did some demo mobile UIs for products a few years ago (yes, years). It went nowhere.
IBM wouldn’t recognize a good idea if it fell out of the cloud and hit all those layers of exec management on the head.
[…] X. Cringely” similarly offered a dim view of IBM’s business apps and flatly predicted that “iOS cloud services from […]
Do you think there is any chance that part of this relationship is to gain access to Watson services as part of HealthKit?
IBM stock price is up 8% since June. http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/charts?symbol=US:IBM#{“zRange”:”4″,”startDate”:”2014-4-17″,”endDate”:”2014-7-17″,”chartStyle”:”mountain”,”chartCursor”:”1″,”scaleType”:”0″,”yaxisAlign”:”right”,”mode”:”pan”}
Must be a good earnings report on the way, no?
Not a big deal? Well, let’s see.
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First, you may want to check out the links below.
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https://www.fastcodesign.com/1671616/a-1-billion-project-to-remake-the-disney-world-experience-using-rfid
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https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/business/media/at-disney-parks-a-bracelet-meant-to-build-loyalty-and-sales.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
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So. Disney just spent 1 Billion dollars to implement their MagicBand gizmo using RFID.
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A device that collects and sends vast amounts of data from all Disney properties and their visitors to a back-end cloud. Where big data analytics is used to slice it and dice it and then present it on iPads or iPhones to Disney staff, ranging from gate keepers and security staff, to executives. Data ranging from payments to gain access or settle hotel accounts, to security alerts, day’s revenue summaries, reports, etc. … reports that can be drilled down into for various locations, assets, visitor categories, promotions, etc.
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Now, let’s see again, who else might be interested in this kind of technology? How much revenue could a systems integrator get from such a project? What technology and infrastructure would be needed to implement the back-end analytics? How many of the potential beneficiaries would want to do it/run it all themselves? How many would rather outsource it all to say, an IBM or maybe just hire IBM to do it for them?
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And we are talking just about one gizmo – a wrist band, of potentially many more to be released by Apple using RFID or iBeacon technology, among others. Some devices will be made by Apple partners, for instance the home security/automation devices. But all will need back end analytics to serve up data that users will pay for. And the users will pay for not only the iPad or iPhone applications, but more importantly for the information they get through these applications, on a subscription basis. Let’s repeat that: on a subscription basis.
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There is not much potential in it for IBM?! Think again.
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What’s in it for Apple? More iPad and iPhone sales to the enterprise? Think again.
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There is a lot more to potential revenue for Apple, beyond the device sales and the 30% cut from app sales.
There is also the much needed recurring revenue stream coming as a percentage from the subscription to the back-end analytics/cloud driven services, even if running on IBM’s cloud.
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Why does Apple need IBM? To sell more devices to the enterprise customers? Think again.
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Can or does Apple want to implement and run the back end for these very large scale information systems?
Can or does IBM want to implement and run the back end for these very large scale information systems?
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Disney. One single project = 1 Billion dollars. How many more similar projects might there be world-wide? Ten? One hundred? One thousand? How much potential revenue is that? 10 Billion? 100 Billion? 1,000 Billion?
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We have seen just the beginning of Apple’s might and potential. The first wave was the ecosystem of local, mostly consumer apps running on iPhones and iPads. The next one coming is the wave of cloud connected apps that will provide useful information to not only consumers but also the enterprise work force.
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“IBM and Apple just not that big a deal” – just not yet, I would say.
Many of the large manufacturing enterprises in aerospace and shipbuilding use Dassault Systèmes CATIA, ENOVIA and DELMIA Software for the design and manufacture of the their projects. And, these software products essentially run on IBM Hardware. Currently the enduser has to depend on the Windows PCs with lousy graphics and user-unfriendly interfaces. The Apple+IBM Partnership will now make the enduser of these software products more productive because of Apple’s focus on the enduser.
Still Robert, you recommended in your book that IBM should partner with Apple. And IBM is doing that.
Let’s look at the numbers:
1) 9 straight quarters of declining revenue
2) $33B in borrowed money, all going to stock buybacks, not capital improvements or R&D
3) Net debt has increased by 55% since 2012
IBM used to be known as an electronic engineering company. Its now a financial engineering one.
http://goo.gl/VZ6LD1
Ex-IBMer and Apple fanboy here… While I was at IBM I had the “opportunity” to run numerous apps on the iPhone that were being written for internal consumption. Garbage, every one of them. It’s like the developers read “iOS development: Novice to Expert in 24 hours” and used pre-canned examples to make the UI’s. But maybe internal apps aren’t subject to the same scrutiny as customer facing apps….?
May I present to you Lotus Traveler. This app-bomination sounds good on the surface: you can now check your Lotus Notes email on your phone! But wait, before you install you have to set the home screen passcode to a minimum 8 character password that includes a mix of upper and lowercase letters and numbers (on the Android version you also had to install some worthless antivirus software). That’s right, they couldn’t just lock the app with a passcode, they had to lock the whole damn phone. So now when you want to quickly pull your phone out of your pocket to check the weather, you are now stymied by a complex passcode… might as well not even bother. Oh, and what about the app? Garbage. The interface looked nice (by IBM standards) but it was slow and buggy. Needless to say I deleted it within a week.
Every piece of software I used at IBM was horrible. Notes, Sametime, Sametime Meetings (for webcons), their Intranet search. Given that well crafted apps require an extra level of skill to run on the rather minimal memory and processor speed I can’t wait to see what IBM does here. There are probably a bunch of fresh Indian programmers already porting their bloated Eclipse applications over to it (My Help anyone?).
Oh Robert, credit where credit is due please. A partnership of this size between IBM and Apple would have been many months if not a year or two in the making.
Maybe your hatred of IBM has blurred your perspective and therefore you haven’t considered the bigger picture and benefits of this deal to both companies. Unlike other analysts/commentators….. ie. http://blog.gardeviance.org/2014/07/ibm-cunning-fox.html
The idea is that they’d collaborate to bring enterprise software to tablets and supplant microsoft in company workplaces.
and flying cars…. jetpacks….election of representative government….
Hope its good for Apple in the corporate space, I use my ipad as a note taker and would love to be able to access the corporate lan instead of having to drag my dodgy laptop (windows XP FFS) in case I need to reference an email or work group.
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Talking of email, I use Notes and it seems to actively prevent me from doing my job. I believe its cursed or haunted because a human couldn’t have written such an evil piece of software.
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I first used Notes 15-20 years ago and can honestly say it hasn’t (in my view) improved much since then.
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So in summary, deploy a decent mobile email/workspace client and kill lotus notes.
[…] It May Simple Not Be A Huge Deal […]
Bob,
Just a delayed and latent thought here. I agree with you overall premise, but there may be another reason for this venture.
PC sales have stunk in all areas for a couple of years now and many corporations are still running XP. From the techs I have spoken to, the majority believe their companies may not upgrade to Windows 8.x (mainly due to issues just upgradinging to Win 7).
Do I smell an opportunity for corporate Macs to replace corporate PC’s (at least in part)?
Linux would be a dark horse here for that type of opportunity, mainly due to third party software that companies have bought and rely upon. (no not office suites, but industry specific apps/database interface (GUI) apps, etc.).
What are your thoughts?
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