Apple and Salesforce Further Bolster Collaboration with a Fresh SDK for iOS

After the Initial Partnership Announcement in September, Both the Companies Are Fiercely Working Towards Robust Enterprise Application Development

Last September, we covered the initial announcement of Software Technology magnates, Apple and Salesforce working together. The announcement came a week after iOS 12 was released on 17 September 2018. This announcement, speaks about a major upgrade in Salesforce’s Software Development Kit (SDK) to build better native Salesforce Applications for iOS. Salesforce’s concept of this upgrade is built in conjunction to better suit newer software releases for iOS. Swift, Apple’s programming language, will also better adapt to the new SDK. Post-Dreamforce 2018, Apple and Salesforce have been significantly trying to expand each other’s product portfolios by leveraging each other’s channels.

“It’s a great move for Apple to partner with the industry leader in CRM, especially considering how dedicated Salesforce is to evangelizing new products and concepts,” said Brent Leary, a CRM and customer experience analyst. “But it’s also a win for Salesforce. It makes sense to get CRM and mobile aligned, and partnering with Apple obviously helps accomplish that.”

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Mobile-Centricity

A major initiative of this partnership is to make iOS mobile devices like iPhones and iPads adopt enterprise scale applications. The easy-to-use SDKs will help Salesforce-iOS achieve the same, combined with an interactive user interface. Experienced coders can build iOS applications on the fly with this new SDK. Simplified features like drag-and-drop also permit amateur software developers to easily build applications for Apple’s mobile products. An example of this will be developers being easily able to integrate Face ID and Touch ID.

Leyla Seka, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Salesforce Mobile, said, “We’re going to let companies familiar with iOS development tailor their Salesforce apps to what their customers need. It lets businesses develop apps with the familiar user experience of iOS. [The apps] will be connected to the Salesforce database, which is secure and trusted, and have access to device-specific features. If you’re an iOS developer, SDK is similar to what you expect from iOS and Java. You can get in there and get working very easily.”

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Emerging Horizons for the Mobile-CRM

Dreamforce 2018 revealed Salesforce’s infusion of Einstein Voice. The inclusion will eventually facilitate Salesforce users to operate their applications via voice commands. Einstein Voice is an AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP)-driven bot that will allow users to perform several tasks on Salesforce. Hence, with Einstein and Apple’s Siri ready to merge, voice-powered possibilities for Salesforce’s CRM only multiplies.

“I see more apps that are going to be destined for voice,” Leary said. “You can [facilitate] CRM by inputting information with your voice, as opposed to typing and clicking. Because iPhones are the biggest mobile device that sales folks have, CRM now has a conversational platform.”

Upcoming developments about this partnership include a pilot version of a redesigned Salesforce application for iOS users and another app for Trailhead, Salesforce’s online classroom.

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