Managing iPhones in the Enterprise

Posted by: Rachael King on May 04, 2009

With more employees taking their iPhones to work, IT departments are scrambling to figure out a way to manage them. The iPhone, unlike the BlackBerry, started out as a consumer device and still lacks some management and security features that corporations have come to expect from other mobile devices. Now, a number of software companies including Good Technology, Sybase and Tangoe are stepping in to fill that void.

Later this month, Good Technology will release new iPhone security and device management features in its software for managing corporate fleets of mobile devices. “We looked at ways we could do this that would make the device secure and be something IT would use going forward,” says Brian Bogosian, CEO of Good Technology. With this software IT departments can now give workers access to corporate e-mail on their iPhones over the air and help manage and enforce password policies while also managing other mobile devices at the same time. That software can also detect if an employee buys a new device and can make sure that corporate e-mail only goes to the new device and not the old one too.

As for security, data in the iPhone inbox, calendar and contacts is currently unencrypted. On March 23, Sybase released an application called iAnywhere Mobile Office that can encrypt those elements and provide extra password protection. “We leave everything else untouched,” says Willie Jow, vice president of business operations mobility at Sybase, an enterprise software vendor.

Managing a device can be especially tricky when it’s owned by the employee. “People leave the company and still have e-mails cached on there, things that are essentially property of the corporation,” says Sean Ryan, a research analyst of mobile enterprise at IDC. Not surprisingly, workers aren’t enthusiastic about the prospect of the company wiping the entire device, especially when they might have personal applications and information on the phone.

Today there’s software that can help with that problem. “Our technology goes out and says you have these four apps that belong to me and I’m removing them,” says Julie Palen, senior vice president of mobile device management at Tangoe, which makes software to help companies manage their mobile devices. The other applications that belong to the user remain on the device, just where they left them.