How Apple Watch is Taking Wearables Inside Business Domain

By Zia Askari

Taking the lead, Salesforce.com has announced its App for Apple Watch, and there are many more business oriented Apps set to give wearables a whole new meaning in the realm of business productivity.

With today’s excitement around the forthcoming Apple Watch (due to be actually made available in April 2015), it’s becoming clear that with the entry of Apple – there will be no confusion around the usability of these products.

As usually, Apple design has bought simplicity and elegance to the whole scheme of smartwatch segment and with this, the cloud, social, mobile and data science revolutions are now set to converge on to the wrist of end consumers as well as business users.

If we look back on the history of Apple and its iPhone, the organization has quite successfully inspired itself from an end consumer perspective but also moved well inside the business realm. Taking this unique positioning forward, the Apple Watch is set to reimagine our relationship with technology and redefines the way people engage in the workplaces.

According to a recent blog post by Daniel Debow, Senior Vice President of Emerging Technologies at Salesforce, wearable devices present a tremendous opportunity for businesses to connect with customers, partners, employees and even products in a whole new way.

“In fact, 68 percent of executives call wearables a “priority” for their companies, according to Forrester Research. That’s why we are so excited to announce Salesforce for Apple Watch, designed to bring the personal technology of wearables to you, the business user.

Salesforce for Apple Watch has three main components: the new Salesforce Analytics Cloud for Apple Watch, Salesforce1 for Apple Watch and Salesforce Wear Developer Pack for Apple Watch.

Salesforce Analytics Cloud for Apple Watch

With the launch of Analytics Cloud at Dreamforce 2014, Salesforce introduced a new age of analytics. “This is analytics based on empowering everyone, bridging the last mile between insights and action. If you haven’t used Analytics Cloud yet, go download the playground right now. Analytics Cloud can leverage data from a wide range of sources—not just Salesforce—and presents it all in a visually compelling, intuitive mobile interface. Performance metrics are just a click away from the mobile home screen, and you can drill down into original datasets to see where teams are selling the most product, how your performance matches up to forecasts, who owns an account...the list goes on and on.” He adds on.

All this is set to give a whole new meaning to the smartwatch segment and completely redefine its usability – considerably adding the business productivity part to the fun and elegance element.

Talking on similar lines, Frank Palermo, Senior Vice President - Global Technical Solutions Group, Virtusa says that the race for wearables really begins today. The Apple Watch launch once again sets the experience bar for what users expect in connected wearable devices.

“The pattern of success is very familiar to what we have seen with iPod, iPhone and iPad. Create a simple, intuitive device, design it to have a "cool" factor, setup a complete ecosystem, have apps that provide utility and value, package it well, price it reasonably and hype the heck out of it! The bottom line is that Apple delivers a complete platform rather than just discreet devices. Apple Watch will  be launched into a ready-made thriving environment, unlike for example, Google Glass.

The concern that Apple Watch might suffer a similar fate to Google Glass dissipates when you look at the respective approach of those companies. Google tends to take more of ‘engineering’ go to market approach, where they release new innovations quickly to market (in beta form), to get them into the hands of developers who they hope can create innovative applications for the technology. That approach can work, but takes a lot more time to get into the mainstream consumer market. Google Glass was always a cool idea looking for a practical application.

So, while I’m not sure I actually need an Apple Watch, I will be getting online to buy one. That's the track record and respect that Apple commands in the market." He concludes.