Apple Has Answered the First Round of Complaints from Corporate Developers? Here's One Big Developers' View of Round Two

Posted by: Peter Burrows on March 12

Apple’s plan to develop an iPhone software ecosystem is off to a flying start. Business plans are flowing into Kleiner Perkins, the venture capital firm that announced a $100 million iPhone software fund. And Apple today disclosed that developers have downloaded more than 100,000 copies of the software developer kit.

At least one of those downloads was by business software giant SAP. “Apple saw an opportunity to move into the enterprise, and it’s great to see,” says senior vice president Mike de la Cruz. He says Apple did a great job addressing the glaring reasons CIO’s have been loath to support the iPhone so far—particularly lack of Exchange compatibility.

But having crossed out one round of problems, a new crop will inevitably appear. For example, many big companies—maybe 20% of them—use software other than Exchange, such as IBM’s Lotus Domino. Also, Apple may need to give big companies the ability to deploy iPhone apps as they please, without having to get Apple’s okay (currently, the p[lan is that only software that Apple makes available on its App Store can be used on the iPhone). Says SAP vice president Vinay Iyer, “most enterprises don’t have to go to someone else’s portal to deploy their applications.” Having developed sophisticated software deployment processes, many big companies won’t want to spend the time and money to include the App Store. Nor can they rely exclusively on the App Store, since those iPhones will undoubtedly have to integrate with legacy applications.

They also have other questions. For example, CIOs will no doubt have loads of questions about deploying iPhones and iPhone apps. How will Apple deal with all those calls? Who, precisely, will CIOs be able to call for answers? “There’s no such thing as an out-of-the-box solution that works for every company,” says Iyer. And what about companies that don’t use the network of AT&T, Apple’s exclusive partner for iPhones in the U.S.?

All this said, these SAP execs give Apple very high marks so far. “They’re starting simple, as they should,” says de la Cruz, with an approach that’s sure to appeal to smaller developers, smaller companies, not to mention consumers (As Engadget reports, gamers seem to be jumping all over this). While SAP created a web-based version of its CRM software for the iPhone last December, he expects them to build software based on the SDK as well. “We want to be there.”

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