Cupertino-based tech behemoth Apple has today announced a partnership with consulting firm Deloitte to further bolster its grip on the corporate market. This news comes at the heels of Blackberry’s withdrawl from the smartphone market, thus giving Apple the necessary push to bring its mature and secure iOS platform to IT professionals via this partnership. It’s the one avenue which Blackberry had hogged and successfully supported for the past decade.
With this joint effort, both partners will now be working to create a ‘first-of-its-kind’ practice that’ll focus on helping corporate clients get acquainted with iPhones and iPads for day-to-day functions in the workplace.
Commenting on their partnership, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple says,
As the leader in digital transformation strategy, Deloitte is an ideal partner that brings a team of Apple-dedicated strategic advisors to help clients truly revolutionize how they work using iOS, iPhone and iPad.
iPhone and iPad are transforming how people everywhere get work done. And through this partnership, we’re able to help even more businesses tap into the incredible capabilities that only the Apple ecosystem can deliver.
Deloitte has promised the participation of more than 5,000 strategic advisors in this initiative, which will have teams in America, EMEA, and the APAC region. The same has been elaborted in the official blogpost,
[Deloitte will be] solely focused on helping businesses change the way they work across their entire enterprise, from customer-facing functions such as retail, field services and recruiting, to R&D, inventory management and back-office systems.
In addition, Deloitte will also collaborate with Apple on the development of a new consulting offering called EnterpriseNext. This program will be aimed at helping clients make the shift to Apple hardware and software products to rapidly prototype custom services across more than 20 industries.
Commenting on iOS being the best mobile platform for businesses and its benefit for company’s own workforce, Punit Renjen, CEO of Deloitte Global says,
Our dedicated Apple practice will give global businesses the expertise and resources they need to empower their mobile workforce to take advantage of the powerful ecosystem iOS, iPhone and iPad offer, and help them achieve their ambitions, while driving efficiency and productivity.
But, Deloitte is looking to take the partnership and the EnterpriseNext program one step further by helping not only impact the workflow of its employees but also its customers. It will be providing them with three core enterprise products, including Value Maps to discover the highest impact possibilities within their industries; Workshops for rapid prototyping; and finally help iOS architects, designers and engineers housed within Deloitte Digital Studios to easily produce and deploy natively integrated apps.
Consulting firm Deloitte is the fourth corporate giant to ink an enterprise deal with the Cupertino-based tech behemoth. This deal also falls in line with other strategic partnerships Apple has signed with IBM, Cisco, and SAP in the recent past. These have also been centered around the making the use of Apple products more prominent in the workplace via custom cloud apps.
