Friday, June 26, 2009

IPhone 3g S Enterprise Ready?

With the latest release of Apple's iPhone, the question arises to most IT savvy individuals: Is it ready for our enterprise?

There are a slew of enhancements that Apple has specifically focused on in order to attract the attention of the private sector. Most people don't know that the new iPhone Configuration Utility 2.0 allows a laundry list of configurations that enhances the overall security and control through policy. While these features are a great start, they still don't match up to Blackberry's configuration overall. Most specifically the BES Server policy management and configurable options.

Some of the features out there that iPhone does support is:

Password complexity
Remote Wipe
Hardware based encryption
VPN Access
Wireless Security Policies

and much more.

Overall, do I think the iPhone is enterprise ready yet? Most people say no. I would say why not. If you can enforce security policy on the device, ensure that the information is encrypted, and protect your mobile information in a centralized manner... Then whats the big quarrel? Is it as good as Blackberry? No. But it IS manageable if you decide to move forward with it.

Some links:
http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/enterprise/
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Enterprise_Deployment_Guide.pdf
http://support.apple.com/downloads/iPhone_Configuration_Utility_2_0_for_Mac_OS_X
http://support.apple.com/downloads/iPhone_Configuration_Utility_2_0_for_Windows

Read more!