Halliburton, one of the world's largest energy corporations with over 70,000 employees worldwide, will be making a huge move away from BlackBerrys, to converting their employees to iPhones. For those still not convinced about the iPhone and iOS' place in enterprise, this decision comes after Halliburton did significant research into both Apple's platform and the Android, and decided Apple was the way to go.
BlackBerry is undoubtedly still the best communications device on the planet, but increasingly users and businesses alike are requiring more than just communication -- they're requiring mobile computing platforms.
To give a sense of the breadth of this change, Energy Services Group (ESG) is Halliburton's largest business segment and provides technical products and services for petroleum and natural gas exploration and production. Up until now Halliburton employees had been given BlackBerries. If they wanted an alternative the only option they were given were Windows Phones. BlackBerry have been part of Halliburton's IT policy for over 10 years. Right now Halliburton supplies about 4,500 of their employees with BlackBerry smartphones.
BlackBerrys have long been the staple of enterprise -- they performed well and lived up to what enterprise customers have come to expect. The iPhone and iPad have made great strides over the past several iterations of iOS in order to provide better support for business users. And it's paying off.
More and more companies are starting to support iOS in enterprise on a regular basis, while others are letting the users choose with BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) initiatives.
Apple recently announced that pretty much all of the Fortune 500 were testing or deploying iOS devices within their organizations, which is startling considering how slowly enterprise usually is when it comes to responding to new technologies.
Even RIM has made moves to provide BlackBerry enterprise support for iPhone and iPad. Now we just need RIM's new CEO to provide full on BlackBerry Connect functionality before other companies, like Good ride iPhone and iPad success to an insurmountable lead.
Are you using your iPhone in the enterprise? Let us know how wide iPhone and iPad deployment is where you work, and how they're affecting productivity.
Source: AppleInsider
