Change happens all the time, but never more frequently than in Silicon Valley where the playing field is constantly shifting.

Bitter rivals in the personal computer era, Apple and IBM recently announced that they have teamed up to transform the way enterprises embrace mobility. As part of a wide-ranging partnership, the two tech giants will create a suite of apps and services aimed at enterprise clients.

It isn’t the first time Apple and IBM have worked together, but it will be the first time Apple’s reputation for innovation and passion for seamless user experience and IBM’s capabilities around big data and analytics have been truly leveraged to change the way we go about doing business. It’s the start of a fundamental shift in the way enterprises adopt and use applications.

“What we’re delivering aims directly at the new quest of business—smart technologies that unlock new value at the intersection of big data and individual engagement,” said Bridget van Kralingen, senior vice president, IBM Global Business Services.

Whether it’s giving sales people anywhere, anytime access to relevant data to help them close a sale, or using big data to anticipate when key employees are most likely to quit their jobs, even if they haven’t yet realized it themselves, the intersection of cloud, data and devices offers a competitive advantage to enterprises that engage employees through world class mobile applications and leverage data in the cloud.

Several years ago Marc Andreessen, a prominent venture capitalist, stated that “software is eating the world” – in our view, just like the food chain, it pays to be at the top. Apple and IBM’s new relationship is symbolic of how the new enterprise world is starting to operate, which means spending less time on processing data, and more time on using it to grow the business.

In a recent study, businesses estimated that they would achieve an average increase in productivity of 36% if they mobilised their key enterprise apps. Find out how Mobility as a Service (MaaS) from Certus can help you leverage your existing enterprise applications to deliver what employees need, wherever and whenever they need it.