Apple, IBM Add Healthcare, Industry Apps to Enterprise Mobility Collaboration

Written by DH Kass 1
April 6, 2015

Apple and IBM have met both their interim schedule and goal to total to some 22 business mobile apps in the IBM MobileFirst portfolio across 10 industries by this quarter.

In late January, Apple (AAPL) chief executive Tim Cook said the iPhone maker and IBM (IBM) would release another 12 apps in Q1 from their enterprise mobility collaboration targeted at healthcare, energy and utilities and industrial sectors.

Now with the release this week of eight new mobile enterprise apps in the industrial products and healthcare industries, Apple and IBM have met both their interim schedule and goal to total to some 22 business mobile apps in the IBM MobileFirst portfolio across 10 industries by this quarter.

So far, the collaboration between the once bitter rivals seems to be working as planned, which is good not only for the companies themselves but for the far larger issue to advance enterprise mobility.

In February, the collaborators added three new apps–Advisor Alerts, Passenger Care and Dynamic Buy–to go with an earlier app to bring the total number at that point to 14 across eight industries.

In this round, three of the four new healthcare mobile apps are for the iPhone–Hospital RN, Hospital Tech and Home RN–with a fourth for the iPad–the Hospital Lead.

Additional apps also were released for the industry products sector (Rapid Handover), the travel and transportation industry (Ancillary Sale), retail (Order Commit) and insurance (Risk Inspect).

Late in 2014, the duo released 10 mobile apps for the banking, retail, insurance, financial services, telecommunications, governments and airlines industries. The ultimate goal is to stock the IBM MobileFirst portfolio with some 100 mobile apps aimed at enterprise businesses by the end of 2015.

Last July, Apple and IBM pledged to work together for each other’s benefit in an enterprise mobility initiative to build industry-specific business apps for iOS-based mobile devices. In addition to building native enterprise mobility solutions for the iPhone and iPad, the deal will produce new cloud services optimized for iOS and new packaged offerings for device activation, supply and management.

Apple already has brought to the party AppleCare service and support offering tailored to the needs of enterprise customers and IBM has gained access to resell iPhones and iPads to its corporate customers.