Apple has announced a new partnership with network giant Cisco. If you believe Fortune, the goal is to sell more iPhones and iPads to business customers. The move is intended to make it easier for businesses to use Cisco products like its video, chat, and web conferencing services on Apple‘s (AAPL) mobile devices. Fortune says that no new products have been announced under the partnership.
In fact, this collaboration seems to be a deal looking for a plan. Rowan Trollope, Cisco’s senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s collaboration technology group, told the author that both Cisco (CSCO) and Apple sales teams would soon meet with business leaders at other companies to discuss their technology needs. The conversations are intended to help give Cisco and Apple ideas about the products they will develop together. He also declined to confirm if any Cisco or Apple engineers are engaged or any timeline for when the new products will hit the market.
Even though there are no plans, the Cisco VP claimed that customers will be able to prioritize mobile traffic on their networks so that workers watching YouTube videos on their iPhones won’t hog all of a company’s bandwidth. Apparently, Cisco and Apple engineers will work on updating iOS Apple’s mobile operating system, to prioritize network traffic from Apple devices, which “would be difficult without a joint engineering project,” according to the article.
Prioritization would be a good start, iOS updates have crushed networks in the past. The number of hoops you have to jump through to make AppleTV’s Bonjour work on an enterprise network is stupid. Just proof that Apple is not ready for the enterprise.
Cisco has tried to create new product lines outside of its core networking and switching businesses to help boost its sales. Sales of its collaboration products are so stagnant that the firm has resorted to 85% discounts on telepresence gear.
Cisco has a history of buying consumer-orientated businesses like Apple, destroying the business, and then jettisoning the remains. Linksys and Flip Video come to mind.
Apple has also buddied up to IBM (IBM). The plan seems to be to add an IBM markup to overpriced Apple mobile devices. And then sell them to firms that have too much money. The combination has developed pushed-based apps that target specific industries, like healthcare or law enforcement.
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The fanboyz are drooling over this deal – Apple Will Change the World (again?) – Maybe if they clean up their proprietary non-routable protocols.
It has been a while since Cisco has done something notable. Maybe new CIO Chuck Robbins will shake things up at Cisco now that King Chambers has mostly moved on.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.