“iPhone. Whether enterprises are prepared or not, it has arrived,” Brian Prince reports for eWeek.
“It is only natural that IT organizations shiver at the thought of the iPhone endangering their networks, but they will have few options to block its entrance to the enterprise and no recourse but to prepare for it, said Andrew Jaquith, an analyst at Yankee Group,” Prince reports. “‘Regardless of the bloviating prognostications of analysts, journalists or other talking heads—this one included—early-adopter employees and status-seeking managers will smuggle the iPhone…into enterprises of all sizes,’ he said.”
“‘Because of the iPhone’s enterprise suitability—not in spite of it—these employees will place increasing pressure on IT groups to support e-mail, calendaring and intranet application interfaces that work with the iPhone.’ Enterprises can choose to support the iPhone by using open standards for e-mail access, and by configuring their VPN to work with the iPhone’s VPN client, Jaquith said,” Prince reports. “‘Not supporting the iPhone is an option too, but frankly in my view the security issues are not that significant,’ he said.”
Prince reports, “Jaquith said that many of the security worries raised by critics of the iPhone have been exaggerated. ‘Let’s look at the facts. Internet-capable phones have much smaller attack surfaces than desktops,’ he said. ‘Moreover, the iPhone has a much smaller attack surface than the smart phone operating systems it has been often compared with, such as Windows Mobile. The iPhone has no open TCP/IP ports, no removable media, no USB drive functions, no Bluetooth services other than audio, no file system access and no supported native third-party APIs or SDK. If you can’t run third-party code on it, you can’t run hostile code on it either.'”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Essence” for the heads up.]
My users can buy iPhones all day long, fine with me.
Mind you, I’m not going to support them. I couldn’t if I wanted to. They don’t play with Exchange, and we don’t allow iTunes (or anything similar) on corporate PCs.
When Apple puts ActiveSync on the iPhone and I don’t have to support iTunes we’ll talk about it. Until then the iPhone is unsupported because it simply does not meet our corporate infrastructure requirements, i.e., Exchange support through either ActiveSync or BES.
But hey, buy them if you want, knock yourselves out. You just can’t do anything with it on our networks.
If employees want to put pressure on anyone, don’t put the pressure on IT. Put the pressure on the rest of Sr. Management. Tell them to take funds out of that Xmas Bonus pool, raise pool, etc. and put them into the iPhone conversion budget. Also tell them that IT needs an officially sanctioned corporate mandate to sit down and plan the best way to integrate iPhone. If IT got that I guarantee they would gleefully cooperate.
Geez, the solution is right there in front you all. License ActiveSync. Thats means its up to Apple. Get their butts of the floor and stop trying t push another box into the corporate office and just put that stupid ActiveSync in there. Problem solved.
WAAAAHHHHH, where’s my budget??
Sheesh, you IT folks are dumb. Why not just approach it like all iPhone developers will, as a web app? Keep the iPhone corporate email as web access only. Same with calendar. The user can then have their personal stuff synced via iTunes at home.
You are sheep, and I’m surprised they pay you for just keeping things afloat. Where are the innovative solutions to this future issue?
bloviating ???
Not in the dictionary on my mac.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bloviating
blo·vi·ate (blv-t) intr.v. blo·vi·at·ed, blo·vi·at·ing, blo·vi·ates Slang
To discourse at length in a pompous or boastful manner
MW nuclear. First time I’ve ever seen it misspell a word. Should’ve been “unclear”
Why in the world would a user want Exchange access as a web app when he already has a Blackberry that does the job correctly?
The innovative solution to this is for Apple to fix the damn thing. Sorry, but until Apple either puts ActiveSync on it or allows a third party to add a piece of software to sync e-mail, calendars and contacts CORRECTLY, which is to say OVER THE AIR, it’s useless in my company and thousands of others.
Personally, I hope Apple corrects this and I have every confidence that they will, but right now the thing is useless to me.
And I guarantee you that there is ZERO budget for any additional infrastructure to make iPhones work. This is 100% an Apple issue at this point. They either need to get ActiveSync on it or get an SDK out there so someone else can do the job right.
@McFly is correct. If Apple is thinking that any IT department is going to add another box to make iPhone work, then their insane. If their thinking web app, which mean IT will have to spend more time and money for it, thats also insane. There is a solution right now. Add it there and iPhone can own the market!!
The user can then have their personal stuff synced via iTunes at home.
Something bothers me about that. If you don’t see it, you’re an Apple lemming. And to the next guy who calls me a troll, I’ve been an Apple user when you were still in diapers.
IT will come around because they are tasked with delivering solutions. All management has to do is not take no for an answer.
I’m a big IT guy, working for the military and designing data centres worth hundreds of mlllions of dollars. I have no problems with the iPhone.
Could you drop this stupid idea immediately? Some dumb arsehole of a journalist came up with some stupid idea that IT guys would have a problem.
They don’t. So don’t keep pushing the meme, because it’s fucking stupid.
Reading all these messages, I thank Odin that I’ve got my own business and have nothing to do with tiny corporate minds!
at my work, it is the CIO who hates and is scared crazy of Apple (except for her iPod).