Enterprise applications are likely to be another major source of profits for Apple after the iPhone. While the consumer-grade giant Apple's enterprise-level debut chose to cooperate with IBM, what secrets are hidden behind this?
The latest financial report released by Apple a week ago can be said that both revenue and profits hit a record high, but afterwards, some people questioned Apple CEO Cook's ability to innovate: in the future there are cards that Apple can out? About the analysis of Apple's financial statements, please refer to the WeChat of the newspaper. "iPhone has fallen iPad, Apple's bottom card will be it?"
In fact, many people have not noticed that Cook has turned the corner of his hand at the launch of the new financial report-enterprise application solutions.
From 0 to 100
Apple's entry into the enterprise market is not a subjective assumption. In the second half of last year, Apple signed an "exclusive" cooperation with the enterprise giant IBM. More than a month ago, Apple quickly introduced the first enterprise-class IBM MobileFirst applications for the iOS operating system. On the day of the announcement of the new financial report, Cook announced that Apple and IBM will push another 12 IBM-based enterprise-class mobile applications in the first quarter, and even revealed that the two companies will cumulatively launch more than 100 applications by the end of this year. It is reported that Citigroup, Air Canada, and Sprint have announced support for MobileFirst applications for iOS.
From 0 to 100 applications in only one year, this radical speed is unprecedented.
However, enterprise-level APP is not as simple as consumer-grade. Although the marriage between Apple and IBM is the behavior of the global headquarters, but in the recent IBM China Cloud Computing Experience Week, Guo Jijun, partner of IBM Global Business Consulting Services Greater China, revealed the secret behind the cooperation.
Apple's innovation has changed the way people live, but in terms of business applications, Apple's products have not yet changed the way companies work and operate. Apple's choice of IBM as the most important reason to enter the enterprise-class market is to realize the desire to change the company together with IBM. In the cooperation between Apple and IBM, the new applications created specifically for companies can support cloud services and bring IBM's big data and analytics capabilities to iPhone and iPad users in the enterprise. IBM's layout and capabilities in cloud services have become a solid foundation for this collaboration.
What is the relationship between APP applications and cloud? Guo Jijun explained in a simple way: “All things that we do today in mobilization are inseparable from the cloud. Cloud, big data, and mobile social networking have formed a completely new ecology. If you implement enterprise-level applications on a mobile phone today, We also followed the traditional approach of first gateway to get it to our gateway, and then the gateway was connected to the internal enterprise, and it would not be able to escape the fate of failure because it cannot be flexibly expanded. Gateways need to be continuously expanded, but if they are not expanding in the cloud but expanding in their own businesses, they will return to their traditional practices. So, the mobile revolution is directly related to the cloud."
Different from the consumer APP, enterprise-level APP applications are merely the peripheral nerves of complex enterprise processes and core data. If there is no effective and reliable cloud in the background and understanding of the enterprise's business, then such an APP can only be a decoration. Guo Jijun also mentioned that IBM and Apple set up a joint laboratory in California specifically for this purpose. This year, the 100 enterprise-class APPs will be jointly built by both parties and verified by Apple.
What can cloud help?
If you still find it puzzling, then this example can help you understand how important the backend of enterprise mobile applications is. Perhaps most of the “fruit powderers†do not understand enterprise-level applications, but mobile phones that rely on enterprise-class applications and are popular around the world are definitely precedents. In the era of e-mails and important communication tools for business people, BlackBerrys have become the business “explosive models†of the era with e-mail push capabilities and higher security of back-end servers. European and American business people are almost at hand. And in that era when there was no cloud, the security and push functionality of the BlackBerry background server combined the sensitivity and experience of enterprise-level requirements. In the cloud era, front-end applications are even less likely to disengage from back-end platforms. This requires IBM to make in-depth changes to the entire business process and their experiences of enterprise customers.
The cooperation between Apple and IBM is not a simple application, but cooperation in big data and business process transformation. In other words, enterprise-level APPs of this kind are practically a matter of great importance. It shows how IBM and Apple can help companies move and cloudize, and take business requirements as a guide to carry out new transformations, which will eventually affect the entire industry. pace. This kind of cloud must support the core business of the enterprise. It must also have the elasticity of the cloud. The requirements are really demanding.
IBM's dual-layout approach of "CMS Enterprise Cloud + Softlayer Public Cloud" on cloud services has become the key. Especially the former, it is the only cloud service that is currently set up for the company's core business. It is not difficult to find that, unlike start-up customers of public clouds, traditional large- and medium-sized enterprise customers are more interested in CMS, which is also IBM's unique point in cloud layout.
The CMS Enterprise Cloud provides ITIL-compliant operation and maintenance management processes and customized management services. It not only includes the full lifecycle operation and maintenance management cloud service, but also includes middleware operation and maintenance management, database operation and maintenance management, and SAP operation and maintenance management. Additional management services. At the same time, CMS also provides the industry's only service level agreement (SLA) up to the operating system level, a single virtual machine, up to 99.95%, and provides comprehensive security and isolation and cross-platform enterprise-wide environmental support.
Guo Jijun also disclosed that IBM is developing an enterprise-level API that is based on the open platform of Apple, allowing more independent software developers in China to carry out enterprise-level application development on this platform. "The applications they make can run on IBM's cloud, and they can also run on other home clouds, but they are using IBM's services and capabilities. This is the future direction of the cloud."
Nowadays, more than Apple is interested in IBM cloud capabilities. With the cooperation of IBM CMS and Century Internet, which was established six months ago in China, both Chinese partners and corporate customers have access to this unique cloud service. It is reported that Ovio, Nantian, Infobird Software, Vectra Cloud, etc. have become partners of CMS, and Wang Peng, General Manager of Century Internet Cloud Integration and Cooperation Division, revealed that it has come from education, aviation, telecommunications, finance, manufacturing, etc. Industry customers are tested on the CMS platform.