I'm familiar with the report as well a number of them that have been done on personal liable vs. corporate owned. It's just not something many companies will want to deal with right now. As mobility continues to grow it is definately something companies will have to get their arms around as soccor moms are now walking around with mobile devices and want to feel “productive” while having a useful device.

For any company owned asset be it iPhone / Blackberry etc there needs direct policy on what is allowed or not, many large companies do not allow users to install whatever they want on a company laptop and smartphones (paid for by the company) are no different. That is where the personal / business line is blurring as devices are capable of both. To me having lived in this vertical for 8+ years I keep my personal usage to my own device and business to what is provided. Why would I want my SMS audited? Not able to load whatever I want from my provider app store?

Being a mobile professional it is not my job to form policy. You need strong backing from your Risk / Compliance officer and crystal clear language in your company policy manual. Some companies have zero tolerance for users that circumvent/ignore these controls and I think that is extreme and try and allow some personal usage but know any given day our legal, compliance, HR dept may change that.

If this economy every gives me back some budget I'd love to check out your product as it's definately needed for other devices and MDM is a mess to install and admin.

“Seems like a lot of work vs. slap in a BES, apply your policy – meet compliance.” True, that would be the case if users could not buy their own iPhones or any other activesync device and skirt around IT policies. Many organizations risk non-compliance because users opt for their own personal device used at work verses the Blackberry stuffed in their desktop drawer. One IT director of a large HMO recently told us, “I am tired of saying NO to users.” So, IT can offer the user the device of their choice, and for some that will be a Blackberry, while also meeting their compliance mandate.

Per the iPhone 3GS and encryption. To be clear, the hardware based DAR encryption capability of the 3GS is for the whole device and should not be confused with new encrypted back up capability of iPhone OS 3.0 and iTunes 8.2.The encryption capability that most folks are concerned with is DAR encryption on the phone. EMM Compliance Enforcement ensures that passcode policies are used with 3GS encryption so that a complete policy is in place to protect the device when lost. So if the user changes policy settings (or even devices), they are denied access to the IT services and IT admins are notified that the device is out of compliance. This is achieved by doing a compliance check every time the device syncs – so its not a set the policy and forget about it approach.
Regardless if it’s a Blackberry or an iPhone, smartphones are converging work and play into a single device. EMM is there to provide users with the device that best suits their need and also give IT the tools they need to support that driver and meet their corporate charter. “The rub is any company that put in a enterprise solution for iPhone would feel the wrath of iPhone users anyways as you will to some degree are limiting their device functionality.” Do BES admins “feel the wrath” of Blackberry users for doing their job? I think most users would be grateful to be able to user their non-Blackberry device at work. Just check out this study…Apple's iPhone would be the smartphone of choice for four out of 10 BlackBerry and other smartphone users, according to a new survey by the research company Crowd Science. Crowd Science also finds that 14 percent of smartphone users would switch to a BlackBerry as their next device, while 82 percent of iPhone users would choose to stick with the iPhone brand. Read more at http://tinyurl.com/nz2l2o.

This is a timely issue for us. We're forced to extend security and compliance policies to our mobile workforce, and that workforce is increasingly utilizing smartphones to access our IT infrastructure and capabilities. Blackberry might be an appropriate solution, but we simply can't constrain our users. We have executives demanding their favored device. We have vendors and carriers offering interesting incentives for Blackberry alternatives. We certainly see a bevy of interesting applications coming down the line from the likes of Apple. In short we have to accommodate this new reality. I repeat – this new reality.

I have been a little disappointed by the lack of vendor offerings in this space. This is especially true of Apple and Palm who have been quite busy trying to convince me they have what I need when they quite clearly do not. (I will abstain from color commentary on Microsoft). For all their warts RIM understood quite well.