Forrester Backtracks; iPhone Judged Enterprise Ready

by Yves Neidlinger on 14/04/09 at 2:32 am

Yves Neidlinger is a technologist and a social media and marketing consultant. He is the National Channel Manager for Navara and the founder and Editor in Chief of iPhoneCTO.

If you’ve visited iPhoneCTO before you know we focus exclusively on covering iPhone from the enterprise perspective. Imagine our surprise when AppleInsider publishes a story about iPhone’s enterprise readiness and it’s deemed a better business device than Blackberry.

Months ago, Forrester Research issued a warning that iPhone was not enterprise ready and for companies to take a wait and see approach. Forrester has now published a report titled “Making iPhone Work in The Enterprise: Early Lessons Learned.” The bottom-line? Forrester has backtracked and now gives iPhone their quality seal of approval.

If that wasn’t news enough, the reasons for the change are equally enlightening. Would you believe that deploying iPhones makes users happier and as a result, more productive? They are also more willing to access work content due to iPhone’s superior browser and internet capabilities. The report finds that iPhones are easier and less costly to support than other devices and touts the improved security features that were included with iPhone OS 2.0. Microsoft Exchange support certainly didn’t hurt either.

This signifies a major change in the way iPhone is being perceived as a business device. While it will always be a consumer device first, this marks the end of RIM’s lock on the corporate market. Things just got a little more interesting…

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