iPhone Centre

The iPhone 3G may have a lock on the Sexiest Gadget Alive title for 2008, but in the frumpy and boring world of things that matter to enterprise IT managers, it's no pinup.

Despite Apple's improvements upon the previous iPhone, primarily through its licensing of Microsoft's ActiveSync technology, the 3G and its iPhone 2.0 software remain less competent and less tested than its BlackBerry and Windows Mobile counterparts.

"From an IT support standpoint, you want a hardened device, something you can fire and forget," said Todd Christy, president and CTO of Pyxis Mobile, a smartphone application maker. "I think the iPhone is cool, but it isn't there from an enterprise standpoint."

"It's a great product but has a ways to go," said a senior IT official at a large US business who, after evaluating the iPhone 3G, chose not to deploy it, citing weaknesses in configuring, securing and supporting the iPhone up to enterprise standards.

"A year after Apple comes out with a consumer device, these kinds of enterprise things are not going to happen magically," said the official, who declined to be identified.

So on exactly what tracks does the iPhone still lag?

1) Manageability and security

When it comes to employees' smartphones, IT managers may seem like the worst kind of control freak. And for good reason -- nothing is as easily lost or stolen as a smartphone, along with its corporate data.

RIM's ability to ease IT managers' worries has been key to the BlackBerry's success. It introduced device management software, BlackBerry Enterprise Server, at the same time it launched the device itself back in 1999. Today BES, as it is affectionately called, lets IT managers enforce more than 200 security and other IT policies, as well as create their own.

Microsoft is attempting to challenge BES' dominance. Earlier this year, it released System Center Mobile Device Manager. SCMDM, as it is often abbreviated, gives IT managers 125 built-in policies for managing Windows Mobile 6.1 phones, as well as the ability to create their own.

SCMDM's biggest strength may be its integration with the popular Active Directory technology, which lets IT managers reuse their carefully-tweaked set of employee privileges and access rights with little extra work.

Jonas Gyllensvaan, CEO of mobile management software vendor Conceivium, expects SCMDM to "make big inroads by the end of the year."

For IT managers not on SCMDM, their experience remains firmly in the second tier, with 45 policies available to them via Microsoft Exchange 2007 SP1's ActiveSync. Policies include numerous ways to manage passwords, control whether phones and storage cards must be encrypted, and turn on or off the phone's camera, consumer e-mail account, or text messaging.