They have solved the software conundrum mostly but it is going to cost a small fortune to keep the odd Mac, iPhone, and “unapproved” machines off the network. The physical device they are contemplating in order to give them their myth of exclusion is going to cost upwards of $60k. For their investment they will get a guest network, a way to authenticate both users and machines and, they hope, piece of mind.

On our Blackberry server we have 22 authorized users (folks who can get to their Outlook resources on our Exchange servers) but overall there are at least 150 iPhone users many of whom are using our network because we have no way to stop them without that expensive hardware device that our budget cuts for the next two years have eliminated. Of course we have a workaround. Every day I log onto our active directory servers (three of them) and export the wireless user list and then run a batch file to move them to another folder and blend them together by VLAN. I log on to those servers twice a day and since I work at night the only evidence I see of rogues is unexpired DHCP addresses. We allow our leases for 8 hours.

Our division director (the company CIO) is a staunch Windows person and he very simply will absolutely not make way for anything not Microsoft or Cisco. Friday night I was helping one of our users with a printer problem and we visited about things while I was puttering around with her PC, laptop, and printer. I ended up connecting her to a network printer temporarily until Monday when the printer guy will replace the broken printer. She was watching what I was doing and she commented it took less work for her to get her MacBook Pro (17″ screen), MacBook Air, and iPhone on the network so that she could print work she does at home. Additionally, she uses Apple’s remote desktop connection from home to get access to her network drives where her work files are kept. The whole point here is that she is a capable, smart, innovative woman who had a need but was refused help by my department and puzzled through it on her own. She is one of them rascals that knows how to read!

Is iPhone enterprise ready? Of course it is, that problem is that the Windows world does not want the competition in the only venue where they can still dominate because their drones hold the power. In five years I am going to retire and I hope to see our mixed MS/Apple network up and running before then. How great would it be for our users to actually be served by its IT department instead of being told why we cannot give them what the are asking for.

They have solved the software conundrum mostly but it is going to cost a small fortune to keep the odd Mac, iPhone, and “unapproved” machines off the network. The physical device they are contemplating in order to give them their myth of exclusion is going to cost upwards of $60k. For their investment they will get a guest network, a way to authenticate both users and machines and, they hope, piece of mind.

On our Blackberry server we have 22 authorized users (folks who can get to their Outlook resources on our Exchange servers) but overall there are at least 150 iPhone users many of whom are using our network because we have no way to stop them without that expensive hardware device that our budget cuts for the next two years have eliminated. Of course we have a workaround. Every day I log onto our active directory servers (three of them) and export the wireless user list and then run a batch file to move them to another folder and blend them together by VLAN. I log on to those servers twice a day and since I work at night the only evidence I see of rogues is unexpired DHCP addresses. We allow our leases for 8 hours.

Our division director (the company CIO) is a staunch Windows person and he very simply will absolutely not make way for anything not Microsoft or Cisco. Friday night I was helping one of our users with a printer problem and we visited about things while I was puttering around with her PC, laptop, and printer. I ended up connecting her to a network printer temporarily until Monday when the printer guy will replace the broken printer. She was watching what I was doing and she commented it took less work for her to get her MacBook Pro (17″ screen), MacBook Air, and iPhone on the network so that she could print work she does at home. Additionally, she uses Apple’s remote desktop connection from home to get access to her network drives where her work files are kept. The whole point here is that she is a capable, smart, innovative woman who had a need but was refused help by my department and puzzled through it on her own. She is one of them rascals that knows how to read!

Is iPhone enterprise ready? Of course it is, that problem is that the Windows world does not want the competition in the only venue where they can still dominate because their drones hold the power. In five years I am going to retire and I hope to see our mixed MS/Apple network up and running before then. How great would it be for our users to actually be served by its IT department instead of being told why we cannot give them what the are asking for.