Application developers are already rushing to create enterprise products for the recently launched Apple Watch. Here is our rundown on the nine enterprising apps that could be in the workplace soon.
Salesforce
Salesforce has introduced a range of Apple Watch apps, delivering a range of valuable business insights and notification tools to “let you run your business from your wrist”. Sales, service, marketing, and community notifications are all part of what’s on offer here, along with a range of APIs enterprise developers can use to create new tools and add Salesforce insights to their own apps. “Wearable devices present a tremendous opportunity for businesses to connect with customers, partners, employees and even products in a whole new way,” the company says.
Microsoft
Microsoft has already introduced two useful apps for enterprise users, Microsoft OneDrive and PowerPoint Remote. The first lets you explore and delete images held in your OneDrive storage, while the second lets you control presentations held on your iPhone (useful if you’re using your phone to show a presentation during a meeting.) It also underlines the company’s new strategy of ensuring its solutions are available via every platform.
Numerics
The Numerics app for Apple Watch works with its iPhone equivalent to enable you to track business KPIs on your wrist just by choosing those analytics you want to make visible on the device. Numerics offers instant alerts when key numbers change. The software integrates with Basecamp, Facebook Pages, Google Analytics, Zendesk among others, offering a number of useful widgets for each service it supports. Numerics developer, Romasha Roy Choudhury, predicts, “As applications start doing our work rather than being work itself, businesses will start seeing productivity increase rates higher than ever before.”
ShoreTel Mobility
Enterprise-focused Unified Communications and VOIP provider, ShoreTel has introduced its own Apple Watch app. The app aims to extend UC abilities to mobile devices, enabling functionality like call control, enterprise presence, instant messaging, mid-call dialing, and visual voicemail to carry over to mobile environments. It seems inevitable more UC providers will attempt to work with key wearables.
TigerText
Secure messaging service, TigerText, has introduced its own Apple Watch app. The app lets users securely preview, read and send secure messages in real-time, as well as dictate message replies. Speech-to-text is also supported. Users can also see when a message has been sent, delivered and read. Critically, the TigerText Apple Watch app is also a fully HIPAA-compliant SaaS platform for secure communication, which means it is suitable for sending sensitive information. "Wearable technology is going to see a boom in popularity, and the Apple Watch will be the first to revolutionize this trend," said Brad Brooks, co-founder and CEO of TigerText.
Avaamo
Another enterprise messaging product, Avaamo for Apple Watch, offers a number of features including support for speech-to-text, smart emojis, support or file, images and video exchange and the capacity to keep an eye on conversations at a glance. Ram Menon, CEO and co-founder of Avaamo explains, "We have tremendous interest from our customers and users in the Enterprise Community who believe wrist mounted technology will improve productivity and safety at workplace. “This frontier is truly global with the largest percentage being in Asia, where mobile first is already the default as opposed to a ‘choice’,” he added.
Robinhood
There’s at least one app for investors, Robinhood. It’s a mobile only app for stock trading (US-only at present) that provides a range of useful tools. The Apple Watch app will let you check performance, watch stocks and dig more deeply to gain access to further information. You can even invest in a stock using the wearable. What makes this app attractive is that the service does not charge trading fees, has no minimum investment and that it’s backed up by some of the larger tech investors, Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Ribbit Capital – and SnoopDogg.
Evernote
If you’ve not used Evernote before then you should – it’s a cross-platform app for notes, web clippings, photos, ideas and so much more. Evernote is now available for Apple Watch: users can dictate, search notes and see recent content as and when they need to. If you need a bigger display you can begin reading a note on your Watch and then continue reading on the iPhone with a swipe of the lock screen. “Apple has an amazing knack for completely resetting consumer expectations for the categories it enters,” says Evernote. “That’s what we believe will happen for wearable tech.”
Good
There’s even an Apple Watch app for mobile device management (MDM). Good provides management and control of Good Work email and calendar notifications, in addition to supporting iOS 8.2 MDM controls. Company CTO Nicko van Someren warns: "The Apple Watch likely marks a significant step toward making wearables in the workplace a reality. However, many users will be blindly adding their new watches to mobile devices that hold a wealth of corporate information, creating a potential security vulnerability.”
Find out more about how Orange Business can help you implement new digital workspaces within your organization and take a look at how important wearables will be in business here.
Jon Evans is a highly experienced technology journalist and editor. He has been writing for a living since 1994. These days you might read his daily regular Computerworld AppleHolic and opinion columns. Jon is also technology editor for men's interest magazine, Calibre Quarterly, and news editor for MacFormat magazine, which is the biggest UK Mac title. He's really interested in the impact of technology on the creative spark at the heart of the human experience. In 2010 he won an American Society of Business Publication Editors (Azbee) Award for his work at Computerworld.