Tim Cook Explains Apple’s IBM Alliance

Thirty years after casting IBM in the role of Big Brother in its “1984” Mac ad, Apple has entered into an incongruous alliance with the company. Why is Apple embracing its old nemesis, and why now? CEO Tim Cook told Re/code that pairing IBM’s enterprise credibility with Apple’s consumer-facing mobile device acumen creates an unmatched combination. Here’s his rationale: “The way to think about this is that there are a lot of killer consumer apps out there. … But they were built from a mobile point of view from the ground up. And so they didn’t have the legacy of having been built for the desktop ever. A lot of the enterprise stuff started out from the desktop and then migrated to mobile. It’s not optimized for mobility. … By and large, I think we’ve transformed the life of consumers, but I wouldn’t say we’ve transformed the enterprise. We’ve transformed it some. But the truth is that in order to do that in a big way you need to have the industry expertise of each of the industry verticals, and IBM has that in spades. We don’t have that. … Together we deliver a product to the enterprise that neither of us could deliver on our own, and that we don’t think any pair of or combination of many companies can do. This is a watershed partnership. It really is profound.”

source: John Paczkowski/Recode