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The Apple Watch is almost here, but does it fit into the enterprise?

It’s a question worth answering as wearable technology becomes this year’s arms race.

In typical fashion, Apple didn’t play its hand early when Android-compatible smartwatches hit the market in the last few years. Instead, it waited and developed the Apple Watch, which has the entire modern world waiting anxiously for its release.

Wearable technology is quickly becoming the most scaled-down version of Apple’s offerings. As the iPhone continues to get larger and tablets like the iPad shrink, those concepts are on the verge of blending together. The next logical progression is the introduction of an unobtrusive wearable tech piece, able to be on your person at all times, while maintaining the essential capabilities you expect from your handheld devices. That’s where the Apple Watch fits in.

The Apple Watch is going to push the category forward and will almost definitely inspire many imitators, once competitors see how—when done right—wearable tech will start to supplant our need to pull a phone from a pocket or a tablet from a bag. That “hands free” feature is a key issue and leads, naturally, to many business uses. TechTarget breaks down some of them:

“Wearables may also be able to remotely manage equipment, such as machinery on an assembly line, making the workplace safer for employees. Workers who need to wear special suits, such as environmental disaster teams, could have hands-free access to data on a smartwatch. Any user who needs instant access to important data—members of sales teams, real estate agents, lawyers, rural doctors, law enforcement and fire fighters, military personnel and more—can benefit from using wearables in the workplace.”

If the Apple Watch becomes a staple, it opens up a brand-new set of questions on how to manage wearable tech in the workplace. How do you manage employee tech that’s on—and on them—all the time? While answers to those questions will still emerge, the benefits of wearables in general have already been demonstrated:

The Apple Watch is coming soon—whether or not the world is ready. We think it is. The enterprise has room for the next step in technology, and 2015 is going to be the proving ground that it not only fits, but will grow, adapt and thrive. iBi

Adapted from onefiremedia.com/blog, originally published on February 4, 2015.

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