Employees Determine iPhone Success in Business

Let's see, the iPhone 'may never be secure' (from Computing Business), there are five reasons the iPhone won’t infiltrate your business (from CIO magazine), Microsoft says that the iPhone lacks business savvy (from CNET.com), and enterprise hurdles await iPhone (from eWeek.com). Gee, Apple must be distraught from its complete failure in the enterprise, huh?

Well, not so much. Reuters notes today that the iPhone is winning corporate fans anyway, despite its supposed lack of security, enterprise flaws, poor business savvy, and hurdles to overcome. It turns out executives like it, and guess what -- they actually have some sway in deciding which technologies they use. Think of that.

There's a pretty big sea change going on in the IT world. Consumer technology built to be simple use is catching on with knowledge workers. It's how the PC ended up in corporations despite the prohibitions of the MIS organization in charge of mainframes -- when MIS prohibited them, executives just brought them in from home. The only difference: today, the PC is an iPhone.

With the latest estimates from IDC saying that IT spending is declining going into next year, should we be surprised that employees are bringing their own technology to the party?

Comments

[Thomas A, Gaughan]

Karl,
I enjoy your writing.

Thomas A. Gaughan

[Macbth]

same here -happy holidays

[Nimish Mehta]

Carl,

I love your dream that Apple products in general, and iPhone specifically, would be "allowed" by corporate IT departments. But I am not as optimistic just yet.

Lets take the iPhone (since your article was about that device).

Most people in a company use the blackberry for 4 purposes - email, phone, calendar and address book. Of course there's a host of other things like surfing the net, playing games and so on but I believe the four uses mentioned dominate.

Now lets take each one and check if the iPhone - TODAY AS IT STANDS - does the job adequately. EMail: corporate Outlook not supported, even if you ask Apple (I have). Phone: only Cingular in the US so if your company's phone plan (assuming your company is paying for the cell phone monthly charges obviously) is with TMobile you are out of luck. If your company doesn't pay for cell phone charges or if you can expense Cingular, then this is fine. Calendar: sync with Outlook works great but you can only sync when you are tethered to your PC / Mac and when you are not, you can't send meeting requests to colleagues from your iPhone. In a corporate setting, this is poor at best. Road warriors travel and to only see if you have meeting conflicts when you sync is not adequate. And finally address book: works great, if you are tethered to your PC or Mac but I believe the address book sync etc limitations are not a deal killer so to speak.

These flaws, when combined, are enough to prevent substantial iPhone penetration in corporate markets. To counter this, Apple has recently allowed third party apps and we see the Google App as example #1. I am sure we will see many more, including (hopefully) fixes for the limitations mentioned above. Until that happens, I believe Apple will be stymied in their desire to enable iPhone to enter Corporate America as the successor to Blackberry.

Full disclosure: I use (only) an iPhone and I love it. I run a small business and it is Mac / iPhone based. However the myriad of limitations around security and lack of connectivity to the PC world test our patience, that's for sure.

I am optimistic that's for sure for the future though.

[kellyii20]

None of the above reasons listed are major hurdles... Simple fixes... nothing to it...All to do bout nothin

[reinharden]

One note with regards to Exchange support for email: Exchange Server supports IMAP and a preponderance of large corporate sites even have it enabled. But not all sites do and there's lots of FUD about enabling IMAP being "insecure"..... so, it works fine with Exchange via IMAP.

That doesn't give one the full functionality of Exchange, but I think it's important to recognize where the lines really are whether than where the media says the lines are.

reinharden

[User 128952]

Carl, great point about the transition away from main frames to PCs, I remember lots of grumbling IT guys that were complaining about how to get all those PC onto a network.
The iPhone as a business tool is already happening. Lots of small businesses and entrepreneurs can suddenly get the internet and email on the go WITHOUT an IT department. For us the iPhone is infinitely simpler to get up and running with. We have no simple, inexpensive way of setting up a Blackberry either.
EVERY single corporate meeting I go to stops when my iPhone is noticed, IT STOPS THE MEETING. I'm not kidding, love it or hate it everyone is curious. By the time you get to the photos of your kids or the internet . . . they are busy trying to figure out how long before their current phone plan is up. Third party apps will be written specific to what a business needs, and real work will get done on an easy to learn device . . . which spells productivity. I give lots of presentations of product concepts, so just being able to play a short video (on a GREAT screen) for someone at a moments notice, is worth the cost of the phone.

[Kontra]

I explored the notion of why people who are exposed daily to high interface and interaction values inherent in TV, movies, advertising, magazines and gadgets in the consumer sphere are somehow supposed to be rendered incapable of expecting and appreciating the same within the walls of the enterprise from 9 to 5, with a dozen enterprise examples that aren't sexy:

What isn't sexy enterprise software?
counternotions.com/200.../

[captain flummox]

Any time I can make something work without cracking the manual, I'm twice as likely to adopt. I don't know if that's the case with the iphone, but I'd bet on it.

[John2007]

Carl,
Clear. Thanks again.