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iPhone is Here to Stay. What’s an Enterprise to do About it?

by Yves Neidlinger on 04/06/09 at 7:50 pm

Senthil Krishnapillai is the Director of Product Management (Mobility) for Sybase and contributing editor for iPhoneCTO.

Google “iPhone in the Enterprise” and millions of results will appear. Many are articles and reports commenting on iPhone shortcomings that make it an unsuitable device to be set loose in any responsible organization. This vast congregation of reporters, analysts and IT managers correctly point out that the iPhone was designed as a consumer device and it is hard to argue with these assertions. The iPhone, straight out of the box, is not quite ready yet for prime time in the enterprise.

Most of the comments focus on security and manageability issues, which are de rigueur for any technology to be deployed across the enterprise – particularly mobile devices that operate beyond the hardened, well defended walls of the data center.

Of course, in the real world, it doesn’t really matter what any of these folks say when it comes to the iPhone making its way into the enterprise. End-users, including many executives, love the iPhone, and ultimately – like it or not – that’s what matters. IT managers are just going to have to love, or at least accept it, because the iPhone as an enterprise device is already a done deal.

IT Innovation Driven from the Outside In

This is particularly true because of the emergence of the mobile enterprise as the most dynamic portion of many businesses. There are estimates that mobile employees now comprise upwards of 35 percent of corporate employees and projections that that number will soar to more than 70 percent over the next couple of years. Increasingly, the business-critical activities of many organizations take place at the edges of enterprises. Likewise, much of today’s enterprise innovation is being driven by the actions and expectations of end-users operating in the field at the points of action and opportunity.

Redefining the Smartphone

The introduction of the iPhone by Apple in 2007, which was seen by almost everyone as a re-imagining of the smartphone, essentially guaranteed it would soon find its way into enterprises in spite of its weaknesses. It delivered a completely new and empowering mobile experience for users. The opening of Apple’s App Store and the release of its SDK, allowing enterprise vendors to develop and sell enterprise focused applications, pushed the probability factor that the iPhone would storm the enterprise to the level of inevitability.

Shifting the Focus of the Discussion

Given these realities, the discussion needs to shift to one of how to incorporate the iPhone into the enterprise in a way that ensures the continued security of sensitive information. IT needs to be able to provision and manage the devices despite a very different method of application deployment and the use of the iPhone for both personal and business functions.

Let’s begin with the obvious. Employees on the move have a number of IT requirements that are essential to their optimal productivity and effectiveness. These include:

• Email
• Internet
• Corporate intranets
• Enterprise applications (ERP, CRM, SFA, etc.)
• Customer contact information and history
• Personal and corporate calendars
• The ability to store business-critical data and receive behind-the scenes data and software updates as they become available

Additionally, many mobile workers purchase their own mobile devices and are not too keen about IT departments wanting to install software to monitor and manage their use of their devices. This scenario is particularly likely to be true of iPhone users.

Still, IT departments are responsible for the security of the enterprise and the integrity of the data collected and maintained in the course of doing business. They must protect against security breaches that might occur if phones are “misused,” lost or stolen, when sensitive data is in transit and in an environment in which mobile malware delivered via email is a growing threat?

Easier Said Than Done? Not Necessarily

Getting to the crux of the issue, one might ask the simple question: “Okay, I hear what you’re saying. Now tell me how to do it.”

Addressing these challenges strategically, organizations need to implement a secure infrastructure that delivers iPhone support without requiring changes to their existing enterprise messaging infrastructures.

They need to find a way to cordon off the consumer aspects of the iPhone from the enterprise aspects. Put another way, they need to create an enterprise only zone on the iPhone. Having done that, IT can then address the specific security and management functionality required to bring the iPhone into compliance with the organization’s rigorous policies.

By addressing the unique challenges posed by the iPhone from a strategic, architectural perspective, IT departments can ensure that on the enterprise-only portion of the iPhone, industry-standard encryption algorithms protect all data that is communicated between their data center servers and iPhone clients. They can also make sure that all of the enterprise data at rest on the device is fully encrypted. They can implement and enforce password access and react to potential threats through device lock-down and/or data wipe. All while leaving the non-enterprise area of the iPhone unaffected.

Additional, essential functionality that can be delivered through the use of such an enterprise isolation approach includes:

• Over-the-air client provisioning and deployment
• Automated, unattended software upgrades
• Support for standard service monitoring tools
• Secure communications with no impact on device processor or battery performance
• Single security solution for all mobile device communications

Beyond supporting secure email, organizations can also enable iPhone users to take action from within their email clients to initiate or complete business processes, such as submission and approval of expense reports, human resources requisitions and purchase orders, or to receive notifications and view CRM activities.

A Serious Contender in Need of Enterprise-Class Capabilities

Use of the iPhone in corporate enterprises is inevitable. As of January 2009, more than 17 million iPhones have been sold. Sales are accelerating. In the fourth quarter of 2008 alone, 4.4 million iPhones were sold. The App Store is doing a booming business with over 35,000 applications and a billion downloads. Apple has done a phenomenal job of re-imagining and re-defining the smartphone as a serious computing platform. Now, with the right architectural approach, IT can support that platform for the entire mobile workforce.

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