With both local and national media outlets hailing its arrival, there is no shortage of hype for the new Apple Watch. Sporting features that include advanced messaging, physical dimension alerts, and digital touch, its no wonder why many consumers are excited about the launch.
What remains to be seen is the impact that the Apple Watch will have on the enterprise. Some are already suggesting enterprise use cases, like field work, project tracking and idea capture. And of course, the most obvious use-case, meeting reminders.
As we’ve done in the past (see Google Glass post), we decided to test the flexibility of the AnyPresence platform and see how easy it would be to build an Apple Watch app. The result was a simple but useful “Employee Directory” app, where users can view a list of employees, scroll through the list using the watch crown, and click the crown to get employee details. In this example, the list of employees was served up via APIs on the AnyPresence backend server connected to a MongoDB data store. It could just have easily been connected to an enterprise HR source system like PeopleSoft or Workday.
Best of all, the AnyPresence platform generates an iOS SDK which can be plugged into your Xcode project to create a fancy Apple Watch app with 100% flexibility.
Whatever the use-case, innovation will not stop with the Apple Watch. For that reason, enterprise developers need to adopt a development platform that will support new devices and the Internet of Things (IoT). This is where MBaaS platforms like AnyPresence provide a significant advantage for developers.