I first posted this on LinkedIn in July when the deal was announced. I have added more in an update below.
While much of the talk about the Apple and IBM deal is in regard to selling into the enterprise of iOS devices, there is potentially something much more interesting with this deal.
Apple has found a cloud hardware and service partner.
Think about the possibility of Swift and LLVM software running on IBM hardware running OS X. Apple would finally have a tool chain for mobile devices, desktops and server computers. In other words, Apple would open the full modern computing stack to its developers using one language and one tool set.
Apple is finally going after cloud system and the enterprise.
Update
Putting aside my pure speculation above, we are learning more about IBM’s offer and what we are seeing is very encouraging. Watson Analytics and Bluemix services seem very competitive with other cloud based offerings.
We first look at the technology offering and the additional services that are available, then we look at pricing. We’re still in the process of assessing the technology so I don’t have enough experience to comment today. But I will follow up with a post when I have more information.