Apple Inc (AAPL) Partners With Cisco As Latest Effort To Take On The Enterprise Market

Apple on Monday announced a partnership with Cisco to help create improved experiences for professionals who use iPhones and iPads for business purposes. It's part of Apple's broader strategy to go after the enterprise market and revive iPad sales.

The partnership, announced in Las Vegas at Cisco's employee Global Sales Experience conference, will create a so-called fast lane for Apple users at companies that run on Cisco's networks. Though neither company dove deeply into the specifics of their alliance, the tech firms promised their collaboration will improve the experience on tools like Cisco Spark, Cisco Telepresence and Cisco WebEx, among others.

"Together, we will enable mobile apps and experiences that deliver the quality and experience we need while meeting enterprise requirements for management and security," Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said in a blog post. "Our two companies share a common passion to create a vastly improved mobile work experience."

Over the past two years, Apple has been busy ramping up its enterprise efforts as a way to spur iPhone sales further and bring back some spark to the iPad, which has seen sales fall in each of the last six quarters. Last year, the iPhone-maker teamed up with IBM to create a suite of business-specific apps for the professional users. At the same time, rival Samsung also has been escalating its enterprise efforts, announcing in March a partnership with BlackBerry to offer business customers more security on their devices.

"IPhone and iPad have become essential tools for the modern workforce and are changing the way work gets done," Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. "Together with Cisco, we believe we can give businesses the tools to maximize the potential of iOS and help employees become even more productive using the devices they already love.”