WSJ 's take on IT adopting the iPhone

Ben Worthen of the Wall Street Journal does a very good breakdown of the obstacles that the iPhone faces in the IT department. Not the least of which is that it is new and users want it unconditionally...and they don't care what IT has to say - which doesn't ever sit well with IT.

To paraphrase the article:

• 1/4 of iPhone users over the age of 18 pass their bills onto their employer - implying high use in business.
• Reasons IT give for banning iPhone from business: no way to force passwords, no remote erase, business software support and only on AT&T
• Power is shifting away from IT and to users according to business leaders like SA, IBM (Lotus), Sun and Salesforce.com
• Forrester and Gartner both say the recent announcement address the concerns of businesses and make the iPhone "enterprise-worthy"
• Companies like South Carolina Probation, Parole and Pardon Services who use Novel aren't convinced because they don't want to have to go through Apple to distribute their software.
• Gartner Analyst Michael King says that the iPhone's big screen and desktop-like browser are what differentiates it for other Smartphones
• VPs can usually get IT to support the iPhone to get email
• All of this doesn't matter to users. They want to use an iPhone.

In small business, users might have a lot of sway over IT. However, in large, publicly traded companies, Sarbanes Oxely and other necessary factors keep the power in IT's hands to reject devices that don't conform to their specifications. IT isn't about favoritism or Apple vs. Microsoft vs. Blackberry. There are very black and white "must haves" and "must not haves" that businesses must conform to not to break laws.

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