Apple & IBM: Bitter Foes Turned Partners

Perhaps the unlikeliest of partnerships has happened. Apple Inc. AAPL, which started its journey by challenging the dominance of the International Business Machines Corp. IBM, is partnering with IBM to launch a new class of made-for-business applications.

Bridget Van Kralingen, senior vice president at IBM, was recently on CNBC to discuss how this partnership came about and what kinds of apps both companies would collaborate to make.

"We entered into this partnership to really change the world of work and are fulfilling that promise today, together," Kralingen said. "Today we released 10 of these made-for-business solutions or apps and across six industries. We couldn’t be more delighted by the speed with which our teams have come together and the collaboration and the way in which they are working."

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Van Kralingen continued, "The way in which you should think about these apps is that they are really broadly going to change workflow for business professionals who serve customers. And what that is going to mean really is two complementary skills come into the equation of these apps: our industry knowledge, knowledge of workflows, security, enterprise software together with Apple’s ability for great consumer-centric design."

On how the apps work, Van Kralingen said, "The way in which the apps work is really around, we are taking complex workflow, complex knowledge and experience that exists in organization, knitting it with back-end systems and serving it up to the employee in the moment to make better decisions for consumers."