Apple has a dedicated sales force as part of an "aggressive" assault into corporate territory Reuters reports, as the company hopes to offset declining iPad sales by means of enterprise market expansion. 

Further aiding such effort are "a dozen or so" developers, the story continues, not to mention the IBM, with whom Apple teamed up back in July 2014. Industry experts say Big Blue can help Apple challenge the likes of HP, Dell, Oracle and SAP in both both office hardware and software, while putting in the spokes of similar mobile enterprise efforts by Microsoft, Google and Samsung. 

Via the partnership IBM provides Apple with the predictive software, security and data analytics required for its upcoming enterprise-grade software suite, as well as personnel for a dedicated support hotline. 

Reuters also mentions two startups reportedly working with Apple in enterprise apps-- mobile blueprint viewing and sharing app PlanGrid and fleet management service ServiceMax. 

“From Apple’s point of view the enterprise is really messy, oftentimes unreasonable or even stupid in its demands," Forrester tells Reuters. "They’ve never had a business model to deal with any of that. But they do want the penetration and they do want what market share they can get.”

Go Apple's Enterprise Assault Gets into Higher Gear (Reuters)