Ben Whorten of the Wall Street Journal suggests, in his BizTech blog posting, that the iPhone adoption will be based on business culture. Ben may be partially correct. But, when it comes to enterprise infrastructure, "chic" doesn't get the PO signed.
The dynamic struggle between productivity and security is sure to come into play in the decision to support the iPhone on the corporate network. Ben appears to believe that the IT crowd bans technologies on the grounds that it enables the "goof off" factor, while employees interested in using the iPhone believes that the iPhone will make them more productive. There is an element of truth in both of these viewpoints, but Ben overlooks a much larger issue central to the decision to support anything on the corporate network: compliance.
Ever since the Sarbanes-Oxley act of 2002 changed the regulatory climate of business, the CIO's purchasing decisions have been heavily influenced by the vendor's security practices. Public companies generally must comply with a minimum of three different regulations, and many of the associated compliance requirements apply to the company and all of its supply chain.
Additionally, the consequences for failing an audit are not to be underestimated. Aside from the serious costs involved and the long term consequences of having to endure more frequent and exacting audits, there is jail time to consider. It's enough to give any CIO pause. In Ben's defense, he does make a practical point -- businesses already invested in RIM's Blackberry phone are the least likely to make the switch. This is just economics, plain and simple. Without a solid ROI plan, no sane business manager would be willing to overhaul existing infrastructure to make the switch to iPhone when the current system already solves the problems, especially in a tight economy. But, Ben also says that the switch will "hinge on culture." While culture is a critical component to the success factor of a company -- just ask Google -- the majority of CIOs can't afford to nuke their existing infrastructure simply because the next cool widget to hit the market supports business email.
Ben's points about the cultural beliefs that skew corporate buyers away from the iPhone missed the most surprising element of Apple's strategy to capture market share in the enterprise: it is relying on Microsoft for security. No one else seems to see the irony in this that I do. For years, Apple's marketing has hammered on Microsoft's products as bloated and full of security holes. However, Apple obviously realized that in order to enter the enterprise market they had to do something drastic. Evidently, the need to pump up iPhone sales was enough to get Apple behind Microsoft's Exchange ActiveSync. And remember, ActiveSync is more than just a method to deliver email to a handheld device; it is also Microsoft's conduit for delivering security configurations.
Apple builds their revolutionary device to be compliant to Microsoft's handheld information security platform? And they say politics makes strange bedfellows!