iPhone Enterprise Features

The iPhone SDK is big news to developers, but many corporate customers who’ve lusted after the iPhone’s power, but couldn’t use it due to security and Microsoft Exchange concerns also got big news from Apple yesterday: vastly expanded iPhone enterprise support.

On his blog, Andy Ihnatko writes “Apple has carefully lined up a series of white porcelain plates at the far end of a shooting gallery. Each one is labeled with a known percentage of the marketplace that “can’t” buy an iPhone for specific technical reasons. Annnd… plink! plink! plink!… they’re knocking them all down.” Read it here: http://tinyurl.com/34d2na

Notably, Apple has licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft and will be incorporating native ActiveSync and Exchange support into the iPhone’s existing applications, such as Mail, iCal, and Contacts.

Upcoming iPhone support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and industry-standard corporate security standards will allow IT professionals to seamlessly integrate iPhone into their enterprise environments. New features include:

• Push email
• Push contacts
• Push calendar
• Global Address List
• Certificates and Identities
• WPA2/802.1x
• Enforced security policies
• More VPN protocols
• Device configuration
• Remote wipe

In detail, Apple writes:

“If your office uses Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 or 2007, iPhone 2.0 software will allow you to wirelessly push company email, calendar events, and contacts over Wi-Fi or EDGE networks to iPhones. With secure push email and over-the-air contacts and calendar features, users will stay up to date wherever they go. And thanks to the iPhone Multi-Touch display, users will find it easier to perform common tasks such as accepting meeting invitations and finding contacts in the company directory or Global Address List (GAL).

IT administrators can securely manage any iPhone that contains confidential company information with remote wipe and enforced security and password policies. These device configuration and remote management capabilities allow IT departments to quickly and seamlessly deploy iPhone throughout their companies.

Enterprise-grade networking – iPhone 2.0 software supports Cisco IPsec VPN to ensure the highest level of IP-based encryption for transmission of sensitive company information. Employees will be able to authenticate via password, two-factor token, or digital certificate. iPhone will also support WPA2 Enterprise with 802.1x authentication — the standard for Wi-Fi network protection. These features help provide safe access to sensitive company information on iPhone.”

These features (for both iPod Touch and iPhone) will come in an iPhone 2.0 Firmware update, to be released in June. All iPhone owners will get this update for free, but iPod Touch owners will be charged a small fee for “accounting purposes.”

All of this is huge news; it will be interesting to see how Apple’s stock reacts as the implications of this announcements sink in.