IBM sees $1 billion deal signings with Apple partnership

The deal, struck in July 2014, has yielded over 100 enterprise apps being developed and over 2,000 client engagements for IBM

IBM said its partnership with Apple to cross-sell devices and services to enterprise customers drove deals worth $1 billion for it during the year 2015.

The deal between the two information technology giants was struck in July 2014. It has resulted in a little more than 100 enterprise apps being developed and 2,000 client engagements for IBM, said Mahmoud Naghshineh, general manager for the partnership.

IBM is investing significantly to double the number of iOS developers at Apple-IBM centres from 500 to 1,000 by the end of 2016. The company also announced the opening of a one-of-its-kind centre in this city, to house the largest number of Swift (Apple’s coding language) developers under one roof.

Dubbed iOS Garage, the centre in Bengaluru will be the first site at IBM to cater to the design, development and maintenance of mobile apps developed on iOS for customers. The company says the team in the city will help increase the speed of delivery of apps and services to customers. This centre will be a part of a network of global centres, the others being in Atlanta, Cupertino, Toronto and Chicago.

“Bengaluru is the fifth centre but is the first one to have the full capabilities from design, development, implementation, delivery and maintenance of the full suite of applications. We plan to add more centres in China, Latin America and Romania for Europe,” added Naghshineh.

While a majority of the work being done out of the centre in Bengaluru will be for global clients, IBM says it is also seeing a lot of local enquiries for its mobile-first services. Kalyan Jewellers, a leading entity in the segment, has engaged IBM to help build solutions for its in-store personnel, to better engage with customers through mobile devices.

IBM says the success of its partnership is now motivating clients to demand multiple apps to transform their digital businesses to mobile-first businesses.

The company also announced a 'Mobile at Scale' offering for clients that look at commissioning more than three iOS apps over the next few years.