IBM Joins Wearables Fray with Enterprise Apple Watch Apps

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Last summer, tech giants IBM and Apple announced partnership to develop applications and help bring the iPhone and iPad deeper into the world of enterprise IT, which has long been Big Blue’s playground.

“For the first time ever we’re putting IBM’s renowned big data analytics at iOS users’ fingertips, which opens up a large market opportunity for Apple,” remarked Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, in a July 15 announcement. “This is a radical step for enterprise and something that only Apple and IBM can deliver.”

Now, their efforts have trickled down to Apple wearable.

The companies quietly revealed three new applications that enlist the Apple Watch’s alerting capabilities on Apple’s mobile business website. Among them is Hospital RN, an app for nurses that delivers patient care information, reducing the need to log into a PC during their rounds.

“It uses iBeacon technology to accurately identify patients by location so nurses can easily find their records and provide appropriate care,” states the website. iBeacon is an Apple technology that uses low-power Bluetooth signals to provide location and proximity-based services to iOS devices and applications. “Push notifications on iPhone and Apple Watch alert nurses to review new patient requests, changes in lab status, safety alerts, and prioritized task lists for immediate action.”

IBM also has a safety-enhancing app for field technicians, allowing them to keep up with the latest developments that may affect their work without fishing a smartphone out of their pockets.

“Push notifications provide late-breaking news on severe weather, outages, hazards, and crew member information,” reads the app’s description. “And with Apple Watch, field technicians can view important alerts, without stopping what they’re doing. The intuitive user interface on iOS makes it easy to get field teams up and running in no time.”

For public safety officials, the Incident Aware app provides a GPS-enabled bird’s-eye view of the scene of an emergency situation, including the location of those involved. “They can even access police records to calculate risk, letting other law enforcement stakeholders know where and when other first responders will appear. And in tight situations, public safety officials can receive urgent alerts right on Apple Watch,” stated Apple.

IBM isn’t the only business technology company targeting Apple’s smartphone.

On March 9, San Francisco-based Salesforce, the cloud customer relationship management (CRM) software leader, unveiled Salesforce for Apple Watch. Comprised of Salesforce Analytics Cloud, Salesforce1 and Salesforce Wear Developer Pack for Apple Watch, the platform brings the company’s business intelligence and CRM workflow application experiences to the smartwatch.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Datamation. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.