Analysis: Why Apple Is Cozying Up To Microsoft Partners
This sounds like a headline from The Onion, but it's actually more like a scenario ripped from the pages of The Art Of War. Apple, a company that has made a sport out of depicting Microsoft as hopelessly nerdy and bumbling, is now courting solution providers who live, breathe and evangelize Microsoft products. Also shocking is that Apple would be willing to give up control over any aspect of the iOS experience, even if it's mobile integration work.
But drill down a bit and it becomes apparent that Apple's recruitment effort in Microsoft's channel is just a shrewd, calculated decision that's motivated by business necessity. Apple is selling mass quantities of iPads and iPhones to businesses, and Fortune 500 firms are ordering tens of thousands of devices at a time. This is obviously good for Apple, but it's also a conundrum for a company that has made user experience an obsession.
That's because deploying iOS devices in corporate environments requires knowledge of Windows networks and heterogeneous back-end infrastructure. Apple, which its closed ecosystem, doesn't have expertise in this area, and neither do most of its ACN partners. Microsoft, on the other hand, knows all about the virtues of a broad partner ecosystem, and its partners are quite comfortable in mixed network environments.
By signing up Microsoft partners for MTC, Apple is not only filling a pressing business need, it's also using one of its rival's greatest strengths in a competitively strategic way. "For the first time in a long time, it appears that Apple needs Microsoft," said Cohen Barnes, president and CEO of TBC Net, a Sycamore, Ill.-based solution provider that has obtained MTC.
Compelling storylines aside, the reality is that Microsoft partners are teaming with Apple because Windows Phone isn't yet much of a revenue generator for the channel, and Windows 8 is still several calendar pages from arriving. In the interim, Microsoft VARs with the skills to ensure that iPads and iPhones are secured and well-managed are sitting in the proverbial catbird's seat. With so much iOS integration work out there, who could fault them from wanting a piece of the action?
Meanwhile, the blistering sales pace for iPads and iPhones is adding urgency to Apple's MTC recruitment efforts. More than 100 Microsoft partners have obtained the MTC competency thus far, and Apple intends to have 150 in the fold by year's end. By the end of 2012, Apple hopes to have 1,000 Microsoft partners flying the MTC banner.
Instead of casting a wide net into the Microsoft channel, Apple's de facto channel chief Francois Daumard is targeting specific Microsoft partners whose skill sets extend to iOS integration work, sources told CRN. And like everything Apple does, the company's recruitment of Microsoft partners is happening under a thick veil of secrecy.
At the HTG Peer Group event in Orlando last week, Daumard and Mimi Basu, senior manager of the Apple Consultants Network, showed up at Apple's booth and spoke with attendees about MTC. However, Daumard and Basu kept a low profile at the event, several show attendees told CRN.
Apple has yet to make an official announcement about MTC, but at the HTG event, Daumard reportedly showed attendees a prototype Web site that adds MTC to the search engine on the Apple Consultants Network Web site. That functionality doesn't appear to be live yet, however.
MTC is a bold and audacious move on Apple's part, but it remains to be seen if it'll translate into significantly more business for the partners that achieve it. For now, Apple turning to Microsoft for help with a strategic business problem is one of the most poignant examples to date of how mobility is shaking up traditional IT industry norms.