UPDATED 07:43 EST / DECEMBER 11 2014

First Apple/IBM mobile apps illustrate alliance’s enterprise focus

IBM mobile app for telecommBarely five months after first revealing an alliance to target mobile workers in vertical markets, IBM and Apple are rolling out the first ten of the more than 100 planned applications that the partnership is set to produce. The short time between the announcement of their landmark partnership and delivery of products shows the urgency with which IBM is shifting its business model in an effort to offset declining revenue across the legacy business lines that make up 75 percent of its revenues.

IBM clearly isn’t targeting the Angry Birds set with the initial apps, which are heavy on enterprise features. They come in six categories, starting with travel and transportation. One is an expense management system customized for the analytic needs of airlines, such as understanding how flight plans affect fuel requirements. It also has a recommendation engine that allows attendants to offer passengers special offers and luggage information while in the air.

The company is also introducing an equivalent service for bankers that provides access to client profiles along with a collection of analytic functions that make it easier to turn that data into tailored guidance, which is especially useful when handling smaller accounts. A more advanced version of the financial package is Trusted Advice, which has forecasting capabilities and a modeling engine to test predictions.

Customers in the insurance industry can get an app that’s customized for risk management, and law enforcement officials can now assess risk in their own fields thanks to what is arguably the most significant addition to IBM’s mobile portfolio: a crime monitoring service that aggregates real-time information on maps and video feeds of incident locations, victim status and other vital metrics.

That’s one of the two government-specific solutions included in the first batch. The other is Case Advice, a prioritization tool that Big Blue says balances assignments among staffers based on real-time changes and risk. The two are joined by another pair of apps for the retail sectors designed to help store manage handle inventory more efficiently leveraging a combination of location and inventory tracking features.

Rounding out the roster is a service for the telecommunications industry that allows support representatives to make use of iOS features such as FaceTime to provide a better customer experience, a notorious pain point with mobile carriers. All ten apps are naturally exclusive for Apple’s platform as are the the 90-plus others due in the pipe, whichIBM arch-rival SAP is exploiting to develop its own set of industry-specific solutions for Android in collaboration with Samsung.


A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU