The past week saw IBM host its annual cloud and mobile conference, InterConnect, in Las Vegas while the company’s CEO, Ginni Rometty delivered the annual investor briefing to Wall Street. Both events reaffirmed that the Apple-IBM partnership is an important part of IBM’s growth strategy and not merely a distribution deal for Apple hardware.

At InterConnect, IBM launched an iOS-specific version of its MobileFirst Platform, which allows developers to build and deploy native, Web and hybrid apps.

Since its announcement in July the Apple-IBM partnership has produced 10 enterprise iOS apps, which are currently being run in pilot programs to more than 50 customers. A further 90 enterprise iOS apps are planned for release before the end of 2015.

Rometty meanwhile told investors that IBM’s new growth strategy will focus on open ecosystems and partnerships. [Partnerships are] “a way to monetize our innovation and scale it. It started with the Apple partnership,” she said.

On Thursday, IBM released a case study on the first publicized Apple-IBM rollout at St Virgil’s College, an Australian all-boy’s school. The two-year deal is for IBM to supply the school with Apple iPads and Mobile Device Management (MDM).

At the start of the 2015 academic year, IBM will roll out 550 iPads and 900 Fiberlink MaaS360 MDM licenses to manage the College’s new and existing iPad deployment. The MDM solution will be used to centrally provision wireless access, deploy apps, perform email setup, securing the devices and for central document distribution.

“IBM’s experience at an enterprise level, coupled with Apple’s rich mobile ecosystem, is a very appealing combination for St Virgil’s,” said Damian Messer, Principal, St Virgil’s College.

Market watchers and commentators are sitting up and taking notice of this unprecedented partnership. IBM’s partnership with Apple shows that “these established enterprises are beginning to think, speak, and act like entrepreneurs,” said Douglas Soltys, the Senior Editor of Mobile Syrup in an interview with SiliconANGLE’s theCUBE at InterConnect 2015.

Soltys explained that an entrepreneurial mindset is key to the mobile market. This partnership is “more than just distribution,” Soltys remarked, “it’s both companies growing.”

Image: IBM via Flickr