Apple Thoughts: Forrester Says IT Should Support iPhones

"In the early days of Apple's (AAPL) iPhone, when corporate IT managers were taking their first close look at the device (and wondering whether it would find a place in their organizations alongside Research in Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry), few documents were more influential than the Forrester Research report entitled "The iPhone Is Not Meant For Enterprises.""

This report ought to generate howls of outrage and a contention that Forrester doesn't know what they're talking about, unlike when they said the iPhone wasn't right for businesses. The reasons, as listed, are things iPhone owners have known since day one. Employees like them (obviously), collaboration is easier (I'm not 100% sure about that one, but they do mean internet collaboration; I'm guessing site deployment and web app testing in this case), they need less hand holding (this is definitely true; most iPhone folks are self sufficient or help each other), and they can be cheaper in the long-run (All I know is that my BlackBerry is significantly more expensive on a monthly basis than my iPhone is).

Of course, no $750 report (no, I'm not kidding) is complete without caveats and there are a few of those, too, including the lack of a full VPN solution, lack of cut and paste, etc., but the article notes that a lot of the quibbling little issues should be fixed in 3.0; something we're all waiting for.

Overall, I see no reason to keep anything out of IT or the enterprise. As long as expectations are clearly set with those that go outside the prescribed equipment, nothing should be too big a problem to handle. We have iPhones, G1's, and BlackBerry handhelds in our enterprise and we've set the users' expectations for what they'll get and what they have to get on their own. Its made the process relatively smooth since day one.