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Corporate IT Hanging Up on Apple's iPhone
Posted by
Zonk
on Wed Jun 20, 2007 04:26 AM
from the no-soup-for-you dept.
from the no-soup-for-you dept.
WSJdpatton writes "iPhones can be used for email, but many businesses don't plan to sync them with internal systems used to power Blackberries and Microsoft mobile devices. Employees eager to use the cool new gadget, however, may pressure IT departments to support iPhones even if it means incurring more costs and changing policies. The WSJ reports: 'Incompatible technology has become an increasing problem for businesses as hand-held email and phone devices are evolving into minicomputers that can do such things as download music, take pictures and surf the Web. In the past, businesses have been unwilling to support certain devices, like those with cameras, for instance, because of concerns employees could use them to document company secrets. But these tensions would be magnified if the iPhone is as popular as Apple is hoping and some analysts expect.'"
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Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
Film at 11.
Re:Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you talking about MS, Apple or RIM?
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Re:Yawn (Score:5, Informative)
I could be wrong, but I was under the distinct impression that the iPhone would do POP3/IMAP4, just like pretty much every other phone released in the past 12-24 months.
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Re:Yawn (Score:5, Informative)
With reduced cost per megabyte, higher data rates and increased battery life, this is becoming less and less relevant. I am completely happy with my IMAP, mainly because, when I really need to know, my server sends me an SMS that arrives in less than 10 seconds.
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Re:Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
John Gruber over at Daring Fireball has nailed better than I could here [daringfireball.net].
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Re:Summary of the article. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Summary of the article. (Score:5, Informative)
Otherwise the option is to go manual. Apart from the near impossibility of getting a user to reliably communicate a device's identity (ie a hardware device ID\Serial number\IMEI number) back into a configuration database you cannot seriously ask normal end users to poke around in config dialogs, changing and tweaking settings and expect everything to work. It can be done but your support desk overhead becomes criminally expensive. I haven't even begun to discuss the difficulties involved in effectively securing the authentication protocols used for your end users services - what are we proposing? Cached user names and passwords? X.509 certificates and mutual authentication? OTP's? If so how do you configure both ends so that you preclude man in the middle attacks and credential stealing?
Why do we need to authenticate the device? Well what happens when a user loses a device or its stolen? That happens on average twice a day for us worldwide BTW. We revoke the device's access and then provision the user with a new one. To do that we need to be able to auth the devices too. We could get away with not doing that but would end up having to cancel user accounts to remain secure.
The closed nature of the iPhone precludes the above and that is the reason enterprises are saying that it is not suitable. I think it's going to be a great consumer device and, yes, I want one too but we aren't going to see support and adoption in large organisations that care about security until they provide the tools to manage the platform correctly (or just open it up). If Apple come out with comprehensive configuration subsystem using (for example) OMA-DM via SyncML then things would be looking up.
Exchange support would be nice but it's not critical at all even for monocultural Microsoft shops. Anyone can write a gateway interface between Exchange and anything else if they want to. It may be proprietary but it isn't closed. That's a very important point here.
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is incompatibility a problem ? (Score:5, Interesting)
if so, why don't we seen businesses demanding open standards used when they make the buying decisions ? is this uninformed people being in charge or what ?
incompatibilities are biting businesses for awfully long time, but we still have
...wtf. iPhone is completely standard. (Score:5, Insightful)
What's so "nonstandard" about that?!
Re:...wtf. iPhone is completely standard. (Score:5, Funny)
The corporate "standard" is Microsoft Enterprise Windows Email Exchange Protocol Vista Ultimate Edition 2007, not one of those pesky "open" standards that anyone can implement. Only communists use POP and IMAP, you know.
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No, it's a *big* problem with mobile devices (Score:5, Insightful)
This is actually a big issue. It's physically easier for me to sync my two phones manually, that is, to manually write down and type in contact details between my addressbook, my business and personal phones.
Thankfully to the developers, there is OpenSync: http://www.opensync.org/ [opensync.org] . Pain in the arse to set up at the moment but very much going in the right direction.
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IT will follow when the masses demand it (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see the iphone becoming a corporate toy immediately, but if enough corporate-types adopt the iphone (presumably because it's useful or makes their lives easier) then IT will come around.
Thanks Zonk for the predictably inflammatory headline. Might I suggest something like, "Corporate IT departments would rather commit suicide than support non-Windows hardware." You're already only one step away.
This story is 100% BS. (Score:5, Informative)
-jcr
Daring Fireball (Score:5, Informative)
CEO (Score:5, Insightful)
If the CEO gets an iPhone, the IT suddenly has a high priority action item to make sure it works with the corporate messaging system.
If any VP gets an iPhone, the IT will have a low priority action item to get it working.
If anyone else gets an iPhone, they'll be told it violates the corporate IT policy and they need to use something else for corporate messaging.
iPhone already a success? (Score:5, Interesting)
The iPhone must already must be a success. Otherwise, why would their be so much effort to distribute so much FUD?
Why would I not be able to check my corporate email with an iPhone? According to Apple it will have the Safari web browser built-in, and I could browse the web. I could even check my email using the corporate outlook website (which BTW is one of the only ways to check mail away from the office). And I don't have to ask permission on what device or web browser to use to access the website.
People must be envious of Apple users lately. I can't go a day without reading an article here on slashdot that was spawned out of obvious envy for the platform. I can't blame them since nothing generate page hits like a good old-fashion holy war. Oh and don't get me started on how many "I'm not buying an iPhone" comments that are being posted (even more as I type this comment!).
So you're not buying an iPhone... I don't care. I'm not running out to buy one either, but I'm sure there are people who are and more power to them. Now if I was really into IPods, I might consider purchasing an IPOD with 8GB it would put me back $250, and to buy a new unlocked phone with bluetooth is $250.. or I can get a iPhone for the same cost (of course I would have a stupid 2 year contract). Sure it's a flimsy argument, but who am I to tell other people how to spend their money. Personally, I think the iPhone is a fine product in its own right, and probably worth every penny. At least more likely than any of the $999 and higher mobile PC spawned from Sony or (gasp) Microsoft's Origami project.
Besides I wasted similar amounts of time and money on a Zaurus, Palm Pilot, PSP, and other gadgets that I thought would be fun to have around. I don't remember anyone being as vocal about not buying any of them. Hell, the Zaurus was recommended solely on the premise that it ran Linux.
Re:Not a great new app! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's one way of looking at it, and certainly a valid perspective. But the other way of looking at it is that Apple makes devices that do very specific things and they aim to be the best at what they do. In the example of the iPod, since you brought it up, I actually own a video-capable iPod but I have never used the feature except once or twice for the novelty when it was brand new. Likewise, I have no desire to listen to the radio -- that's exactly why I use an iPod. It can do a number of other things I don't need, and don't really care about. I like it because it's very good at its primary function of being an MP3 player and does so in style. The rest is fluff and I couldn't really care less about it.
As for the points you make about the iPhone, I agree it's unfortunate that there is no true SDK for third-party software. The rest I consider superfluous. Java, Flash, GPS, those tiny qwerty keyboards? Those are the last things I'd look for in a modern phone. If it allows me to efficiently work with my mail and calendar on the go and occasionally access the web, that's what I want and what I think the majority of users want. Any site that requires more than this I wouldn't even want to try using on a phone-like device.
What I am arguing against is not being feature complete, but rather feature creep. I want the devices I use to be capable of doing the tasks for which it was intended and do them well. It seems to me that piling on other secondary features just diminishes the product's ability to perform its primary functions. Devices that try to do everything tend not to be very good at any of those things. Honestly, I think it's just a red herring to claim about things like a lack of GPS and Java on a cell phone. Those are not central to its function of being a portable communications device, and don't matter for most things.
Lest you think I am trying to make myself feel better about blowing money on an iPhone, I'll say right now that I'm not getting one because they're too expensive. I just like the philosophy of having a clearly defined set of tasks for a product and sticking to that, making sure that it is best at what it does. :)
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