Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard the news that Apple has announced the iPad Pro.  That, along with its business partnership with Cisco, mark its most aggressive push into a still untapped market — the enterprise.

Sure, the stats show iPhones and iPads to be the mobile devices of choice for business users (based on adoption and usage rates), but enterprises and more specifically IT departments haven’t truly adopted, deployed and supported iOS devices – it’s been more of a reluctant acceptance of the BYOD phenomenon over the past two years than a corporate mandate.

That’s changing rapidly.  But what has been holding Apple back?   Two things:

• The lack of support for Microsoft Office on the iPad. (solved by Apple and Microsoft with the new iPad Pro launch)
• The inability to print from the iPad (or any iOS device) to enterprise and multi-function printers (MFP’s).

How do we know this?  We got it “straight from the horse’s mouth.”   Since the launch of the xPrintServer, we’ve been working closely with Apple — not only from the corporate side (did we mention the xPrintServer is the first and only print server of its type that’s AirPrint certified by Apple?), but more importantly, from the grass roots level – with Apple Business Team Reps in the field, and Apple Business Specialists in their retail locations nationwide.

According to their retail experts, the two most common questions they get from corporate customers – “When will you have Office on the iPad, and how come I can’t print?!”

Now that our product is certified and available in the Apple Online Store, our mission is to build awareness and drive sales at the online store, and ultimately secure shelf space at all retail locations nationwide.

We kicked off our Apple retail initiative here at the Irvine Spectrum Apple Store – training their entire team on the xPrintServer.  We’ll be continuing our nationwide training, but thought you’d like to hear and see a little more about the initiative.  And just maybe, when you pick up that new iPad Pro, you’ll be asked if you’d like an xPrintServer to go along with it!

Lantronix president & CEO, Kurt Busch presents to the Apple business team @ the Irvine Spectrum store.

Jinu Choi, xPrintServer product manager, demonstrating the AirPrint-certified xPrintServer Office edition.

The calm before the storm – Presentation, demo and retail-ready packaging on display for the Apple Store training.