Five ways Apple should make iCloud business-ready | ARN.  (No longer available online. Original text included below.)

Apple announced on Thursday an update to its OSX operating system, called Mountain Lion. Notable in the updated features is much tighter integration with iCloud, its cloud based file, apps and settings syncing feature. For businesses, this isn’t really news, since iCloud is based around individuals, and has almost no business friendly features. What can Apple do to change that?

Apple’s top competitors, Google and Microsoft, each have business versions of their cloud solutions. Microsoft’s SkyDrive, while a limited solution, does provide document sharing, so Office documents can easily be exchanged among coworkers. Google’s Apps for Business provides a much more robust solution, supporting a companies domain, syncing email and contacts to phones, and providing online document editing and sharing. Apple’s iCloud, in comparison, allows easy syncing of data between devices, but offers no collaborative features, and is linked to a personal Apple ID. 

Apple has always been a niche brand in business, but its recent success with the iPhone and iPad, which are being widely adopted in businesses, is changing that. Apple’s foot is in the door, can it establish a solid foothold in business, expanding beyond the consumer market? Here are five ways Apple could make iCloud more business friendly.

1. Business Accounts

All of Apple’s online accounts are based off an “Apple ID”, which is unique to each user. Currently there is no way to group or otherwise manage IDs, the first step towards sharing iCloud resources within a business. Apple needs to enable business accounts that allow a manager to either designate existing Apple IDs to include in a company group, or better still, assign new company based Apple IDs to employees.

2. Domain Support

Google’s Apps for Business allows a company to use its existing company.com domain name as a location to access their Google services. Apple needs to do the same. iCloud makes email, calendar, contacts and files available online, but these need to be accessible through a companies domain, not only by going to iCloud.com.

3. Sharing

iCloud currently acts as a way of syncing devices, and provides access to some data through a web browser. Once the data is in the cloud, sharing should be an easy next step, one that iCloud needs to have. Workers want to share files. Having a central contact list of coworkers, and the ability to share files with any of them will make it easier to collaborate, and prevent the hassles of managing multiple versions of files that might otherwise get emailed back and forth.

4. Storage

Going beyond sharing individual files, having a group storage space is another way to encourage collaboration, reduce duplicate efforts, and organize important data. While workers can keep data related only to their own work in a more private space, that can be shared when needed, the group space would be open to everyone, and useful for resources that are useful to everyone in a department, or even the entire company.

5. Private iCloud

Businesses want the convenience that cloud storage offers, but some are hesitant to have their data stored on someone else’s servers. Apple already sells servers, it should now offer an iCloud appliance that provides all the features of iCloud, but keeps the businesses data in a private cloud on servers managed at the company’s location.