June 19th, 2007
iPhone's enterprise problem: wary ITs
Today’s Wall Street Journal offers a sobering assessment of iPhone’s chances in the enterprise.
Not that such an adaptation trend would not be popular. As the WSJ’s Jessica Vascellaro and Nick Wingfield write (and I am loosely paraphrasing here) some of the same consumers who will buy, and quite likely fall in love with the iPhone are also employed in, and by, large, networked businesses.
Noting that the iPhone has most of the business communications capabilities they need, these users who come to the device via consumer channels then might lobby their ITs to enable iPhone connectivity with corporate networks.
If it only was that easy, and carefree. But its not.
Blame security-conscious IT folks who get paid to worry about risk. They care more about risk than coolness- as they well should.
“The risk is that there is an eight-gig device (iPhone) that is connected out onto the Internet, and we know there are bad things and bad people on the Internet,” writes WSJ tech columnist Lee Gomes. “Any information about you or your company that you put on your phone could be available to anyone on the Internet.
“So when the iPhone comes out, companies should stick with whatever their external-storage policy is,” Gomes adds. “The iPhone will look just like an external USB connection.”
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
