According to Mr. Zapfel, Unisys will be providing support and “other services” to both corporate and government agencies that buy Apple gear. He also said the contract was signed just this month, and it would mark a rare move by Apple to turn to an outside source for providing such services.
Historically, Apple has not had much success in the Enterprise space. More recently, however, Apple seen iPhone and iPad crack open the corporate doors, with a few Macs following in close behind, and it’s third party support service from a company like Unisys that could be the extra help the company needs to make deeper inroads into those markets.
At least that’s how Mr. Zapfel see it, telling Bloomberg, “Most of those organizations are still pretty heavily PC- based. Apple is going to crack the nut and clients are going to start buying a lot more.”
Unisys began working on the iOS platform with an app developed for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that allows border agents to remotely monitor border-detection equipment (such as cameras) from an iPhone. Mr. Zapfel said that he expects his company to build more software for Apple devices, too.
Lastly, Mr. Zapfel bragged that his company’s ability to figure out how to secure information on the iPhone was a key element to landing a deal with Apple.
“There are all sorts of layers you have to put into it to make sure nobody can tap into it,” he told Bloomberg. “We’ve put a lot of heavyweight engineering into securing the device, which, frankly, no one else has figured out yet.”