This week’s big enterprise story is Apple’s new partnership with Deloitte in which the companies are collaborating on new services that put iOS firmly inside the digital transformation of enterprise IT. I spoke with Mike Brinker, Global Digital Leader, Deloitte Digital, who talked a little more about the deal and the impact of this transformation on everyday life:
Q: Why now?
“Deloitte began doubling-down on digital transformation around 2010 with the acquisition of a mobile digital agency,” Brinker explains. “Since that time Deloitte Digital has grown to over 10,000 practitioners and we now have over 1 billion iPhones sold. The last five years have been dominated by helping our clients better engage with their customers, while leading organizations have been using mobile iOS devices in the enterprise in limited ways. We believe we are at an inflection point in history, like we were with the Internet in 2002, where the focus is rapidly shifting to transform the enterprise and empowering employees to now work the way they live.”
Q: What has been your experience with iOS?
“We have already worked with Apple and iOS devices to transform over 50 enterprise organizations… We’ve developed hundreds of B2C consumer apps for our clients. A great example of enterprise transformation is at Broadcom, where we not only implemented their SAP solution, but we used iPads to empower their shop floor workers and untether them from workstations to be more productive. For a top retailer, we developed the apps that allow their retail associates to be free from the POS terminals in over 2,000 stores. Deloitte is also one of the largest corporate consumers of iOS with over 120,000 iPhones in use.”
Author addition: Broadcom CIO, Andy Nallappan says in a commendation on Deloitte’s website: “iPads have freed our shop floor managers, enabling them to better manage production and operate with real-time data. This has fueled a whole new era of productivity and capability for our shops.”
Q: Why is Apple now such a great fit for enterprise?
“Apple’s products are essential to the modern workforce because of the combination of incredible hardware, software and services that leads to a great user experience. Because people love their Apple devices, they're bringing them to work and that has led to incredible adoption of our devices in the workplace. iOS devices are in nearly every Fortune 500 and Global 500 company today. iOS is the most secure platform for business. The products are built with security in mind, and iOS represents a major leap forward in security for mobile devices. Every iOS device combines software, hardware, and services designed to work together for maximum security. Apple devices are also easier to deploy and manage within organizations.”
Q: How can iOS and Deloitte underpin the digital transformation of everything?
“Apple will bring the best of their iOS engineering and design capabilities, while we will bring the best of our strategy, implementation, and operations capabilities. While this partnership is focused on transforming the enterprise, there is obvious overlap in the skills and capabilities required for helping our clients with their consumer apps. And sometimes the employee and consumer apps overlap -- like in retail with an online store for associates and customers. We will focus the partnership on changing the way we work and empowering employees.”
Q: What is digital transformation? Why should ‘ordinary people’ understand it? What might it mean for them?
“We are all living in a digital era. In the last five years iPhones have become woven into the way we live and interact with each other. 80% of people check their phones immediately after waking and immediately before going to bed. Too often, people are living digital lives and then going to work or school and operating with tools of an older era. Digital transformation is about helping employees work the way they live. Untethered from workstations. Using the iOS devices they know and love, always connected and with intuitive interfaces and a delightful experience.”
Apple now has constructive enterprise-focused alliances with IBM, Cisco, SAP, Deloitte, JAMF, Good, FileMaker and (if you think about it), Microsoft. In a statement following the Deloitte announcement, IBM said the news, "Further valildates the market we established with Apple over two years ago." Read more on IBM's thoughts on Apple in the enterprise here.
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