Does Apple see the iPad as a business device? Of course it does. It just doesn't like to say so in public.
On Monday, we received yet another indication that Apple is refining its tablet for use inside the business world. According to a report from CRN citing sources with knowledge of the project, Apple and VMware have joined forces to provide iPads with access to an online version of Apple's iWork, a suite of office applications. The two companies didn't immediately respond to requests for comment, but in recent months, CRN has proven to be a reliable source for news on VMware.
Other companies have offered online access to Microsoft Office via the iPad -- including the bankrupt San Francisco startup OnLive -- and Microsoft plans to introduce a version of Office that will run locally on Apple's tablet. But it seems that Apple wants to keep business users on its suite of business applications.
Historically, Apple hasn't paid much attention to the enterprise -- i.e., big businesses. Steve Jobs famously said that he hated selling to the enterprise. But the company has been courting enterprise buyers of iPhones and iPads in recent years -- in 2010, The Wall Street Journal reported that several former sales people from BlackBerry maker RIM were working in enterprise sales for Apple -- and in March, it introduced software that helps businesses configure and deploy iOS devices.
According to CRN, the new offering will include hosted versions of Apple's Pages, Keynote, and Numbers applications running in Apple's data centers, and these will run alongside VMware's IT management suite, known as Horizon Application Manager. The applications will be served up to iPads, CRN reports, using VMware View, a tool that provide machines will remote access to virtual desktops running Windows and other operating systems.
As CRN notes, Apple and VMware are already working together on VMware Horizon Mobile for iOS, a product that lets business employees use their personal smartphones for work by keeping company data and applications completely separate from personal applications -- while giving companies the ability to remotely wipe all company information from an employee's phone.
The Horizon suite includes Enterprise Connector -- a cloud identity management system that provides a "single sign-on" for multiple cloud applications, including Salesforce.com, Webex and Workday -- and Policy Manager -- a tool for managing user permission and controls across applications and contexts. It seems likely that VMware's main role in this project would be in controlling which iWorks documents users have access to and giving companies the ability to delete those documents if an employee leaves.
VMware has branched out into several other new areas in recent years. It created the open source cloud platform called Cloud Foundry. It acquired the open source virtual network company Nicira. And it jumped into the office/productivity market with its Zimbra and SlideRocket acquisitions.
All these bets could be lucrative new frontiers if open source virtualization tools like Xen and KVM -- to say nothing of open source cloud systems like OpenStack and CloudStack -- cut into VMware's traditional product sales. But the broader strategy is for VMware to insert itself into practically every aspect of a company IT infrastructure, from servers to mobile devices, both within private data centers and in the public cloud.
