Partnership with Cisco Signals Apple's Seriousness About Growing Enterprise Sales 

Tim Cook and John Chambers

On August 31st, 2015 at the annual Cisco sales kick-off, Global Sales Experience (#GSX), 20,000 attendees witnessed a surprise appearance by Apple CEO Tim Cook with Cisco’s Chairman, John Chambers.  The surprise announcement brought forth a new alliance designed to boost sales for both organizations in the enterprise.

Key insights:

  • Improved experiences.  Apple and Cisco are partnering to improve the experience for iPhone and iPad in the enterprise.
  • Creating a technology differentiation.  By reducing redundancy and improving caching, enterprise users will experience better performance from iOS devices and Cisco Networks.
  • Driving reliability.  Cisco networks will be optimized for easy connections for Apple devices to improve reliability.

Here’s the quick video analysis of the deal (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Video Analysis Of The Cisco – Apple Announcement

20150831 Apple Cisco announcement from Constellation Research on Vimeo.

The Bottom Line: Apple Is Serious About Partnering To Grow Enterprise Sales

From the IBM deal last year, to this Cisco deal, Apple shows its commitment to growing in the enterprise.  More importantly, Apple could have tried to enter the market by itself, howver, it realizes that good partnerships are key to success.  In fact, Apple knows who they are and what they are good at.  As with future partnerships, expect Apple to identify alliances where they can deliver complimentary skill sets and of course drive iPad and other iOS device sales.  Based on the rumors of a Tim Cook appearance at #BoxWorks, one can expect another announcement some time soon.

Your POV.

What do you think of the partnership? Do you think Apple has the right strategy?  Will Cisco sell more networking with the Apple partnership? Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

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