Outfitting the iPhone for business

Apple's iPhone "pits security concerns, vendor intentions, and gadget affinities against caution-minded enterprise IT," in Leon Urlanger's words. And IT shops are nervous, very nervous. The thing is, while CEO's fall in love with the device and essentailly demand that IT rework existing applications and infrastructure to accommodate it, when it comes to managing the phone, "Apple offers nothing even remotely similar to the centralized capabilities offered by RIM or Microsoft. There are no tools for monitoring mobile assets or enforcing corporate software policies, and the iPhone's reliance on iTunes for activation and software updates just doesn't sit well with IT, nor does the need to send the iPhone back to Apple for a battery change." Outfitting the iPhone for business. As the industry awaits an SDK, several outstanding usability issues remain, such that "the iPhone has a long way to go before moving beyond an executive luxury to becoming a true enterprise player."