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Apple’s rapidly growing enterprise story becomes even more compelling thanks to bigtincan, one of more than two-dozen partners helping widen iPad’s offer for the enterprise. It's just one among a series of solutions to expand the company's reach into the space.
Bigtincan develops an intelligent and secure solution for delivery of all content types on mobile devices, including communications, business processes and more -- it’s an interesting Unified Communications solution for iOS.
I spoke with bigtincan Chief Strategy Officer Brian Cleary, who explains: “Being able to access, engage with, annotate and collaborate on all file types and formats in a single, unified platform solution, is critical for enterprises looking to improve how employees engage with content and increase productivity.”
These tools can help enable increasingly mobile workforces for whom email has ceased to provide the rich set of communication-enabled features they need.
Transformation
The digital transformation of everything is an ongoing – and unavoidable – process. Everything and everyone is becoming connected and enterprises need to change and develop in response.
“Digital transformation is inexorable. It is changing a lot of things. It is changing products, but is also giving rise to associated services that are becoming almost more important,” said KuppingerCole analyst Martin Kuppinger this week.
The bigtincan platform does lots of things, enabling securely automated business processes on mobile devices, while also generating insights into use, interaction and collaborative (and secure) sharing of enterprise information.
“Bigtincan is excited to drive the mobile-led business transformation and help to redefine how work gets done on the iPhone and iPad,” said Cleary. “The company is committed to and believes in the iOS platform and ecosystem to enable business customers and to put the unique capabilities of Apple’s mobile devices to work within enterprises quickly and easily.”
Context
The software is also contextually sensitive, so, for example, a sales rep will get access to exactly the information needed when in the middle of a key meeting – the system delivers it without requiring any search through files, folders and content repositories. The information will already be easily discoverable.
“This real-time access to content ensures improved efficiency, effectiveness and productivity across the enterprise and employees,” says Cleary.
Bigtincan also lets enterprises secure content after an employee leaves, a device is lost or some other mishap occurs. “Employers are still able to remotely remove content from their devices and revoke access to sensitive information,” Cleary said.
The system can also limit access to content in response to location, and all key security, compliance and MDM solutions are supported. TouchID, iCloud and Handoff also support the feature.
So, who uses bigtincan? Thermo Fisher Scientific estimates bigtincan has improved sales force productivity by 5%, while customers including Auction.com and Paige Denim have also seen impressive gains in productivity.
Apple Watch
Now, the announcement of Apple Watch support opens up other opportunities:
“Imagine the impact wearables will have on a field service technician who needs to service a wind turbine 200 feet up in the air -- instead of using the standard pen and note pad, or even an iPad, that technician will be able to dictate voice-notes into his smartwatch, which can then be synced across devices and used at a later time,” Cleary said.
Briefly, then, Apple’s enterprise pitch is becoming more integrated, wider and more flexible than it ever has been before – and in another swan song for a sacred cow concerning Cupertino, more partnership-based than people are used to. Because Apple under Tim Cook is both an enterprise and a partnership company. And that’s a winner.
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