Inside the Briefcase
Big Blue Commits to Four Major Mobile Platforms
February 1, 2011 No CommentsSOURCE: IBM
IBM Corp.’s goal in 2011 for what it calls “social business”—or collaboration in the business—on the mobile device is for a complete set of applications with comparable functionality across the four major platforms.
Kevin Cavanaugh, vice-president of business and technology with the Armonk, New York-based company, told a group of reporters at its Lotusphere 2011 conference that IBM doesn’t yet have consistency in functionality across the Research In Motion, Apple, Nokia and Android platforms. But, that is the intention this year.
Security is one such capability to which IBM wants to bring consistency. While RIM and Nokia devices are already business-oriented, Cavanaugh sees Android devices as “somewhere in between at this point” but there is flexibility to apply security at the application level.
He added that the mobile device market is changing so rapidly but that IBM has the advantage of a six-week agile development cycle. “We need to move relatively quickly there while the devices are going to keep changing under us,” said Cavanaugh.
