Coverage: Apple and Cisco join forces

Apple and Cisco announced Monday that they will join forces to make it easier for businesses that use Cisco products on Apple devices, such as the iPhone and iPad.

Forbes writer Aaron Tilley summed up the day’s news:

Apple and Cisco announced on Monday that they have partnered up to integrate iOS products more tightly into the kind of enterprise networks sold by Cisco. Together, they will create a “fast lane” for iOS products in enterprise networks.

The two companies also announced a plan to build tools to help iPhones and iPads take advantage of Cisco’s business collaboration products, such as its voice and video conferencing services.

By tightly integrating iOS and Cisco products, the end result could make iPhones and iPads perform better in corporate environments, as well as kickstart sales for the iPad, which has been experiencing declining sales for six consecutive quarters.

“Apple has mastered consumer, but not enterprise, and Apple is partnering in the enterprise on technologies and experiences that aren’t their core competency,” said Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy. “Long-term, I think Apple is trying to completely rethink enterprise work and workflow.”

Although the two companies haven’t laid out many of the technical details of this partnership yet, one area that Cisco and Apple could more tightly integrate is in Cisco’s Spark and WebEx products, Moorhead said. They have iOS apps, but aren’t engrained into the operating system like the way Twitter, Facebook and Facetime are. “OS-based software delivers a better experience,” Moorhead said.

Another huge area in product integration could be in Cisco’s workplace telephone products. The two could make the iPhone emulate a workplace phone and do away with the desk phone altogether. “This could truly mean one phone, not two,” Moorhead said.

Jonathan Vanian of Fortune dug into the technical aspects of the deal:

The two companies, which will band together to sell to businesses, have been working on the partnership for ten months, said Rowan Trollope, Cisco’s senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s collaboration technology group. As of now, no new products have been announced under the partnership.

But Trollope said that both Cisco and Apple sales teams would soon meet with business leaders at other companies to discuss their technology needs. The conversations are intended to help give Cisco and Apple ideas about the products they will develop together.

Making iOS devices compatible with Cisco’s networking technology is not an easy task that can be done by just one company, Trollope explained. The partnership makes it easier for their joint engineering staffs to work together.

Eventually, potential customers will be able to prioritize mobile traffic on their networks so that workers watching YouTube videos on their iPhones won’t hog all of a company’s bandwidth, explained Rowan. To help businesses prioritize network traffic from Apple devices, both Cisco and Apple engineers will work on updating Apple’s mobile operating system, which “would be difficult without a joint engineering project,” Rowan said.

Rowan declined to say how many Cisco and Apple engineers are involved or any timeline for when the new products will hit the market.

Don Clark and Daisuke Wakabayashi of The Wall Street Journal laid out the companies’ recent partnership deals and the potential problems associated with their pairing up:

The announcement comes as Apple, a powerhouse in devices sold to consumers, has been taking steps to build a broader presence in business.

Last year, Apple struck a partnership with International Business Machines Corp. to jointly create apps for the workplace, while IBM employees help sell and support Apple devices with corporate clients.

One impetus is a slowdown in tablet sales. IPad sales have fallen for six straight quarters; revenue from iPads declined 24% in the nine months ended June 27, compared with the same period a year earlier.

Cisco, meanwhile, has been trying to narrow its focus to more profitable businesses since Chuck Robbins assumed the CEO post from Mr. Chambers at the end of the July. Mr. Chambers, who leaned heavily on acquisitions in turning Cisco into the biggest supplier of networking equipment, said the Apple deal underscores a shift to alliances for the biggest industry players.

“We are going to talk about a new generation of partnerships,” Mr. Chambers said.

The Apple-Cisco pact comes as businesses seek to use smartphones and tablets to make workers more productive. Apple’s iPhones and iPads are popular inside businesses, largely through purchases by individual employees, rather than corporate technology buyers. Few companies manage to effectively integrate mobile devices with their networks of PCs and desk phones.

One big problem, Messrs. Cook and Chambers said, is ensuring employees get adequate networking performance in the workplace. Apple and Cisco said they aim to establish a “fast lane” for iOS devices in the corporate world, prioritizing wireless and Web connections so critical business applications aren’t compromised by streaming cat videos and other nonbusiness fare.

Another issue, they said, is that many workers now have their phone address books on their iPhones rather than on their work desk phones, which may be supplied by Cisco. Integrating such directories is a goal of the partnership, Mr. Cook said.

The Verge’s Ben Popper reminded readers of Cisco’s lawsuit against the Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant:

Time travel back for a moment to 2007, when Cisco sued Apple for violating its trademark of the “iPhone.” Cisco, you may recall, acquired that name way back in 2000, when it bought a company working on ways to access the internet with devices beyond the traditional PC. And yet here was Apple, deep in negotiations with Cisco, brazenly making off with that same name for its new cellphone (we weren’t all calling them smartphones yet).

Fast forward to this afternoon, and the iPhone is firmly an Apple product, far and away the world’s most popular model of smartphone. Cisco sees the writing on the wall, and is partnering with Apple to provide a “fast lane” on its network for executives and office drones who are bringing their iOS smartphones and tablets to the office. It’s all part of Apple’s push into the enterprise, which includes its recent partnership with IBM, another former enemy turned business ally.