Karen Appleton, until last week a senior vice president at Box, is joining Apple, in a move first reported by Re/code.
Last week, as has become custom in the industry, she took to Medium to announce her exit from Box after nine years, but nothing about her destination. Box (BOX) provides cloud-based file storage and document sharing software.
According to Re/Code, Appleton will take on an “enterprise-focused” role at Apple (AAPL), which makes sense given that company’s renewed enterprise push working with partners including IBM (IBM) and Cisco (CSCO).
Coins2Day reached out to Apple and Box for comment and will update this story as needed.
Box, unlike its rival Dropbox, has focused on business users from the get go. Its mantra is that businesses need ways for employees, partners, and suppliers to share and collaborate on documents in what it says is a secure but intuitive way. Just a few weeks ago IBM and Box announced plans to collaborate on business software for Apple iOS devices.
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Apple is in an interesting position here. It is undoubtedly a darling among consumers: There are tons of fanboys who can’t wait to get their hands on its latest iPad, iPhone, even iWatch (although there are probably fewer of those).
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That focus on slick devices helped Apple among PC-centric businesses where CEOs and other high-level execs brought their iPhones or iPads to work regardless of what IT departments had to say about it. Often those devices were not on the corporate approved list, but who’s going to say no to the boss?
Apple’s decision to open-source the Swift programming language was seen as another way to open up inroads into corporate venues.
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The IBM and Cisco alliances are ways to get Apple devices into businesses through the front door, in an IT-sanctioned way. Appleton could probably help with that.
