Apple’s comprehensive offering for enterprise has yet to launch officially, at least via formal announcement from Apple and IBM, but a new website detailing AppleCare for Enterprise suggests it may already be in effect or being sold to actual organizations. The website basically advertises AppleCare for enterprise as an outsourced IT department for Apple software and hardware used by enterprise employees, detailing help desk support, response time and broken device exchange programs.
AppleCare for Enterprise resembles the consumer version, and includes 24-hour, 7-day telephone tech support, but it also comes with some distinct advantages, including a dedicated AppleCare Account Manager for every enterprise customers, and one-hour response time for the most urgent issues, which Apple says involve cases like “when a production service is down.” Customers can also add additional tech support contacts to their account by paying more money, the site explains.
Other perks include onsite hardware service for either two or three years after the purchase of devices as an optional add-on, and device replacement for as much as 10 percent of the iPad and iPhone hardware covered under the Enterprise AppleCare warranty – that doesn’t means replacement for legitimate failure, but just for accidents resulting from employee human error. If they drop and break a device screen, for instance, you can just get Apple to swap it out for a new one, within as little as one day from the time of the accident.
The scope of Apple’s Enterprise partnership with IBM, and the specifics, aren’t yet known, but we’ll find out more soon thanks to upcoming announcements of IBM’s launch of enterprise mobile software for Apple devices, which Apple CEO Tim Cook hinted at earlier this month during Apple’s earnings call.