Red Hat and Samsung have announced a new partnership to create enterprise mobile solutions, one that both companies say exceeds the scope of IBM’s partnership with Apple Inc.
At the 2015 Red Hat Summit in Boston, the two companies launched a new program that will see new enterprise mobile applications, a developer ecosystem, support services, and a joint go-to-market strategy, similar in concept to that which was announced by Big Blue last July – at least on the surface.
“This goes way beyond what the other guys did,” Cathal McGloin, vice president of mobile platforms at Red Hat told CDN.
He explained that, under the partnership, Samsung Business Services is providing Tier 3 support for devices across all enterprise mobility management platforms, including non-Samsung devices. Meanwhile, the Red Hat Mobile Application Platform, on which custom enterprise applications will run is one that is designed to be fully integrated with existing IT systems, to run in the cloud, and to have built-in security through the Samsung KNOX offering.
“Apple isn’t doing anything like providing a support team,” he said.
Gregg Ostrowski, vice president of global enterprise services at Samsung, emphasized that the applications to be built will be customized to each enterprise, although their applications will likely include business intelligence, field and customer service, inventory management and sales catalogue, pricing, ordering, and invoicing.
“We went down the path of creating some apps just to get the conversation going,” he said.
Ostrowski explained that while apps are the number one priority for the two companies, for now, they are meant to offer their sales teams something to take out and show customers to demonstrate the offerings of the partnership, which will include services such as EMM, mobile security and support.
To drive the point home, the two executives explained that, while Android and Samsung devices will be the initial focus, the partnership would branch out to other platforms and operating systems depending on the client’s needs.
“[Android] is not an exclusive,” said Ostrowski. “We prefer to sell our own products if we can.”
According to McGloin, results from the partnership should emerge over the next few months. The two companies will get together as early as next week to begin identifying target companies, including those in Canada to approach with solutions.
“Any area where we have customers that need a particular solution, certainly we’ll support them,” said Ostrowski. “But any area where we can jointly collaborate with Red Hat to solve some of their needs, that’s where we’ll be.”
