Apple Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. are teaming up to help bring more iPhones and iPads to business users.
The partnership, announced Monday, is aimed at helping Apple’s mobile devices communicate more effectively on corporate networks where Cisco gear is widely used, the companies said. They also plan to jointly work on technology to help workers with iPhones and iPads better exploit Cisco’s collaboration products, including its video- and Web-conferencing services.
Clearly the next step in Apple’s push for a more enterprise friendly iOS.
From an enterprise collaboration point of view, this is an even more interesting move and hopefully will lead to Apple adopting a more standards based approach to audio and video – remember when Steve said they’d open source Facetime?
Of course, Cisco already have a full suite of collaboration apps on iOS, but the ability to join a WebEx or Telepresence conference in the same way that you Facetime someone has huge potential to improve the end user experience.
I’m also sure I’m not the only network engineer out there who hopes this means an end to the endless dramas caused by iOS devices in enterprise wireless networks…especially when it comes to Bonjour.