iPhone continues to knock at the enterprise door
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 Barbara Nelson, CTO
Part 1 of 2
When Apple first delivered the iPhone, there were many complaints that it wasn’t an ‘enterprise-friendly’ device, and that label has stuck. But, as Apple has released newer versions of the iPhone OS, enterprise features have slowly but surely been added to the feature set. While the main focus of the iPhone platform (and its siblings, the iPad and the iPod Touch) is still on reaching out to consumers, and providing more and more reasons for consumers to go online and stay online, Apple hasn’t lost sight of a very large potential customer, the enterprise.
So, what moves has Apple made towards the enterprise so far?
The first area of focus has been around connectivity. 3G networks aren’t the only way for the iPhone user to get online. Enterprises have their own secure campus networks, and they would prefer their users to be on their network, when in range of the campus. Apple supports a broad array of Wi-Fi security methods and authentication protocols, so that iPhones and their siblings can connect to these secure campus Wi-Fi networks.
For the roaming user who needs access to corporate resources, Apple supports a variety of VPNs, with IPSEC and L2TP today, and SSL coming in iPhone 4.0. Apple also recognizes that stronger authentication may be needed to access enterprise resources, so support has been added for two-factor authentication using RSA SecurID or CryptoCard.
Once connected, Apple makes it easy to access the most common enterprise application — email. You can push email, calendar and contacts from Microsoft Exchange servers to iPhones, over 3G or Wi-Fi. The iPhone also enforces ActiveSync policies, such as remote wipe, certificate-based authentication, and passcode policies. If you are not a Microsoft Exchange shop, the iPhone supports IMAP, POP3, SMTP, CalDAV and LDAP, to integrate with standards-based email, calendar and contact servers.
To make the life of the IT Admin a little easier, Apple has developed an iPhone Configuration Utility, where IT can set the policies for all their enterprise users. Once set, the policy settings can be signed, and optionally encrypted. Configuration policies can be tied to a particular target device. Configuration policies can be distributed via a USB device, via email, or via the web. They can also be distributed over-the-air using the Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol.
In the upcoming iPhone 4.0, Apple will add some more enterprise features. As mentioned already, support for SSL VPNs is coming in 4.0. Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync integration is being enhanced to support multiple exchange accounts, and add an option to encrypt email (including attachments). A new data encryption API is being added, so that 3rd party applications can encrypt their sensitive data.
>> Read more tomorrow on 4.0 features and how Apple might make the iPhone more welcome by Enterprise >>
