IBM Corp. has partnered with Bell Canada to bring its MobileFirst for iOS to Canadian enterprises.
IBM MobileFirst is the product of IBM’s partnership with Apple to create a made-for-business suite of apps that can be used by enterprises in a range of industries to handle big data analytics on the go. With Bell onboard, Canadian companies will be able to use Bell’s national network to get access anywhere under the Bell umbrella.
“This is a great way for us to accelerate the transformation we see our clients embarking on around mobility,” said Rob Ranieri, IBM’s vice president and partner of North America Apple Mobile Leader, over the phone with IT World Canada. “Being able to partner with Bell gives us the ability to use their features on top of our own to really drive employee adoption of this new way to work.”
MobileFirst isn’t designed with any particular industry in mind. Examples include first responders who can use the program’s GPS data to find the most efficient routes and improve response time; retailers who can save time and resources by accessing or monitoring inventory at different locations remotely; and wealth managers who can create better pitches and save clients time by having access to large amounts of data securely on the road.
“We developed 100-plus applications in the first year that targeted 14 industries that we thought were ripe for transformation,” said Ranieri.
In Canada, Air Canada has adopted this platform in its Rouge line. Frequent flyers may have noticed the switch of onboard entertainment from seatback screens to directly onto one’s own wireless device – just one example of MobileFirst already being integrated into the enterprise.
IBM promises an ease of adoption as well. According to Ranieri, large scale deployments of MobileFirst can be done in as quickly as six weeks.