Halliburton Follows Clorox Dumps RIMM Goes iPhone
Monday, February 6th, 2012
Halliburton (HAL), the oilfield services company, once a bastion for the Blackberry (RIMM), is dumping RIM’s platform and switching Apple’s (AAPL) iOS.
“Over the next year, we will begin expanding the use of our mobile technology by transitioning from the BlackBerry (RIMM) platform that we currently use to smartphone technology via the iPhone,” the firm told employees in an internal newsletter.
Halliburton is taking the same path for it 70,000 employees as Clorox (CLX) did last year, when it ditched the BlackBerry for the iPhone.
The company once relied heavily on RIM’s platform, but after evaluating RIM, Windows Phone, Android, and iOS, Halliburton has settled on switching to Apple’s platform.
RIM’s platform was once synonymous with business communications, but that status has slowly eroded since the iPhone’s introduction. While corporate IT spent the first few years after the iPhone’s introduction scoffing at the device, quarterly reports from analysis firms like Good Technology show that iOS has penetrated enterprise markets in a way that even the stodgiest of companies can no longer afford to ignore.
As such, Halliburton is looking to iOS devices to provide employees with secure access to many of its internal applications from outside the company’s network, exclusively through their iPhones. The demand for such flexibility was driven in part Halliburton’s customers, who desire mobile data-access apps for their own iPhone platforms, according to people familiar with the matter.
Halliburton, said it is actively working with Apple on the transition to iOS.
