Apple has announced that Apple Business Essentials is available for all small businesses in the U.S., bringing together various things like device management, 24/7 Apple support and iCloud storage, according to a company blog post Thursday (March 31).
The tech giant also rolled out new AppleCare+ for Business Essentials options, which can be added to any plan, and has made a two-month free trial available to all customers.
Per the blog post, Apple Business Essentials supports small businesses throughout their life-cycle of device management, including setups and upgrades. It provides security, support, data storage and backup.
In addition to being more streamlined, Business Essentials provides an iCloud work account, adding more storage capacity. Business data is reportedly automatically stored and backed up on an iPhone or iPad.
“Apple has a deep and decades-long commitment to helping small businesses thrive,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of enterprise and education marketing. “From dedicated business teams in our stores to the App Store Small Business Program, our goal is to help each company grow, compete, and succeed.
“We look forward to bringing Apple Business Essentials to even more small businesses to simplify device management, storage, support, and repairs. Using this new service leads to invaluable time savings for customers — including those without dedicated IT staff — that they can invest back into their business.”
PYMNTS wrote that Apple has been undergoing some changes lately as it starts to bring more operations in-house. This will consist of developing its own payment processing tech and infrastructure, in order to construct new financial products in the future.
Read more: Apple Explores In-House Payments Processing, Financial Products
The report said this would cut down on reliance on outside partners in a plan taking place over several years.
Apple’s plan reportedly consists of new approaches to payment processing, risk assessment for lending, fraud analysis, credit checks and other things. The plan would also engineer Apple to be more of a force in financial services in the future.
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