Employees Are Begging for iPhone; What Should a CIO Do?

by Ravi Bijlani on 02/10/09 at 7:23 pm

Employees Are Begging for iPhone; What Should a CIO Do?

Ravi Bijlani is an Sr Technical Architect specializing in enterprise / mobile applications. He is also the co-founder of a mobile application development firm and an editor for iPhoneCTO.

The new generation of mobile devices such as iPhone 3GS, Palm-Pre & Blackberry has made the decision as to which device to use an extremely difficult one. We can spend days comparing features and still be confused. The question that came to my mind is that “If it is that difficult a decision for the individual, how difficult would it be for a CIO to select a device for the enterprise?”. Admittedly the CIO is interested different features and capabilities than the average consumer. In order of importance, they might appear like this:

  • Security
  • Usability
  • Battery life
  • Mobile browser

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Security

Security capabilities are at the top of every CIO’s list of concerns. iPhone OS 2.0 and then 3.0 have made great strides in adding security features geared specifically for the enterprise; Remote Wipe as a perfect example. Unlike BlackBerry, the iPhone does not have rich central management. A simple portal is provided to allow device location (using the built-in GPS) and remote wipe, which works reasonably well. Conclusion is that iPhone does not have the best of breed security (yet), but it has enough which make it a viable option for the enterprise.

Usability

The iPhone is one of the most innovative and revolutionary consumer products developed in the last 5 years. As for usability, no other device currently available can match up. In fact, just today it was announced that iPhone was the hands down winner when it came to customer satisfaction. Jobs’ initial assertion in 2007 that mobile phones were overly complicated and most features went unused is now accepted as gospel.  Less talked about, but still noteworthy is the recent addition of character recognition support for logographic-based languages, such as Traditional Chinese among the two dozen other languages iPhone now supports.

image
Battery Life

Battery life of any device is based on its usage. Apple’s numbers on the iPhone 3GS battery life peg it at 10 / 5 hours talk on GSM / 3G (respectively), 5 hours 3G data, 6 hours WiFi, 24 hours music and 7 hours video. Those numbers are not bad and on par with other smart mobile devices. Conclusion is despite all the publicity about iPhone’s poor battery life, it actually delivers good results.

Mobile browser

Browsing the web while you’re on the move is one of the perks of owning a smartphone. The iPhone has a very intuitive tabbed browsing interface and wins the beauty contest for its smooth adaptive zooming and quick navigation within a page and between pages. I think most of the smart mobile devices lack Adobe Flash support which powers most of the multimedia and interactive features of modern websites. Conclusion is that iPhone has set the new gold standard for mobile device browsing.

Anyone that’s used the iPhone knows what a delight the device can be to use. An accurate capacitive touchscreen and well optimized mobile processors form the basis of that experience, but the iPhone continues to derive its real power in usability. The only thing holding the iPhone back is its limited security, but at the same time security doesn’t seem to be the main issue if you look at the results of a recent TechRepublic poll, which asked 300 CIOs if they support the iPhone, and their reasons for doing so or not doing so. There are always things that could be improved, features to be added, fixes that should be applied — but from first to second generation, Apple has proven itself a relentless upstart in the mobile space, and is showing no signs of slowing down.

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  • robwoodbridge
    I would agree that the CIO is concerned with security but usability, battery and browser don't seem to me to be important at the CIO level. One thing that should be high on every CIO's list of reasons to adopt a device -- any device -- are the number of enterprise-grade applications that contribute to their users' job capabilities. If you don't have applications that help people do their job, adoption (or a need for adoption) becomes cumbersome.
  • Blad_Rnr
    Yes, I agree with the comments above. Windows is a security block of Swiss cheese. Everybody knows it. Heck, McAfee and Symantec know it. We are an all-Mac shop and I don't even run any AV software on my Macs. When the first real virus comes out, I'll start installing it. But Windows has over 200K+ viruses and Windows IT people want to bury their heads in the sand. I can't believe these banks run their inline services on Windows servers. Their IT folks must have their CEOs hoodwinked.

    And the smart phone comparison is laughable. I have had a first generation iPhone for over a year now. Virtually no issues. My wife just bought a Blackberry Curve. I thought this would be interesting to compare. In the first four days she has had to reinstall the OS, can't figure out how to change ring tones for individual events, had to wait an extra day for the Mac version of the Blackberry Manager to arrive to download on her Mac laptop, and now she can't get the web browser to work. Oh, and the web browsing experience when it did work was pathetic. Then my cousin suggested she download an app that rebooted her phone once a day to prevent some sort of memory leak or such. And this is called the Crackberry by some?! Please. My iPhone runs circles around her phone and is so much easier to use. I was appalled to think some people think the Curve is great and wonderful.
  • Rich G
    My concern is with security (Not a windows fan by any means) but not the worry of breach of the phone but the data on the phone. There needs to be a way to secure the data, especially the company assets that are stream via e-mail. I think if you are going to use the phone for work someone needs to write a local data encryption application that protects or walls off the company assets without walling off the personal fun. Bigger converstation then this but that is a good 2 cent blurb
  • Fredrik
    How is it that a person with racks of Windows servers running their enterprise can talk down the iPhone with security as an argument without giggling to themselves?
  • slappy
    @adanc

    Thats the billion dollar question that "no one" seems to ask within the industry. Despite the breaches with Windows time and time again thats reported, IT still hypocritically deny Mac products, using security as an argument. Hilarious isn't it?
  • adanc
    If security is an issue, why the IT is still using Windows in the enterprise.

    Just a bunch of hypocrites because of their jobs security - with the iPhone they may end up with nothing to support just like the Mac.
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