Should Corporate IT Be Afraid of the iPhone?

The iPhone is coming!  The iPhone is coming!  Is this the modern day IT equivalent of the "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"?  Personally, I don't think so.  It is however, a lot of hype and rhetoric which is what I assume Apple wanted all along.  The whole discussion is just more of the Macophiles vs. the Macophobes debate.  From what I've seen it really is cool but in the end it won't be that big of a deal for corporate IT.

From the Macophile side we are told resistance is futile.  Over at Apple 2.0 in their post  "The Coming Battle: Apple's iPhone vs. Corporate IT Departments" they argue "But what both these articles also concede is that resistance may be futile. Increasingly, it's users who drive the adoption of new technologies within corporations, not IT. And when the user is a VP or maybe even the CEO, all bets are off."  Their absolutely right although I'm guessing they maybe over estimating the CEO demand (wishful thinking perhaps?).  I haven't found a lot of articles or blog posts written by the Macophiles (maybe I'm looking in the wrong place) but if you read some of the comments in the articles below you'll get a sampling of the religious fervor surrounding this.  On Tuesday afternoon NPR did a story talking about people lining up at the Apple stores 3 days in advance to get an iPhone as soon as they become available.  It would appear that a number of people have "drunk the kool-aid" that Steve Jobs is pushing. 

From the Macophobes it is one horror story after another:

• NPR June 18th "the AT&T network itself may be too slow for many of the iPhone's most forward-looking features to run properly."
• Wall Street Journal June 19th "Companies Hang Up on Apple's iPhone"
• eWeek.com June 22nd Analysts: iPhone Has Neither Security nor Relevance
• eWeek.com June 22nd Enterprise Hurdles Await iPhone
• TechSpot.com June 22nd "Stay away from iPhone, says Gartner"
• InfoWorld June 22nd "iPhone: The device IT managers will love to hate"
• greg hughes - dot net June 23rd "Thinking about using iPhones at your company? Think again if you care about security."

Again, this all may be true but irrelevant.

David Morgenstern at eWeek ChannelInsider describes the real issues well in his June 22nd post "Fear and Loathing in IT: iPhone and Macintosh".  David Pogue's review in the New York Times also presents a good overview of the pros and cons of the iPhone.  So why do I think this is all a tempest in a teapot?  Why don't I expect the corporate world to demand IT immediately start supporting and providing iPhones?

1. With a price tag of $499/$599 depending on the model don't expect the corporate world to make a mad rush to get it.  Money still matters.
2. It really doesn't provide new functionality.  Existing phones provide email, Internet access, movies, music and you can even make phone calls on them.  The iPhone as best I can tell doesn't add anything to this.  What it does add is what appears to be a much better interface in that it is easier to use.  If this new interface lives up to the hype this could be a big step forward.
3. The iPhone is cool and corporate execs are not.  As such don't expect the corporate world to act like lemmings and rush to get because it is cool.
4. Although we don't always agree with them, corporations like to do things (usually) in a deliberate, rational way.  Rushing out to try new technology, possibly switching carriers to do it, spending lots of money - I don't think so.
5. What's the rush?  The price will soon drop and the security issues will be resolved as other carriers and manufacturers develop competitive alternatives. (see Walter Mossberg's article at Wall Street Online "Ahead of the iPhone,Other Makers Offer Some Quality Devices")

What does concern me is the typical IT attitude of wanting to maintain the status quo.  Bad move.  If the iPhone really does represent new technology or a new demand let's figure out how to make it work.  We can't stop it.  It will happen.  The question is "when" not "if".  It will be interesting to see how many "No iPhone" policies IT departments issue in a futile effort to stop it.  If you stop and think about it we been here before every time a new or cool technology came out and upset our IT world - the PC, the Internet, BlackBerry devices for example.  If we're smart we'll get out in front of this and figure out how to use it correctly rather than being forced as we have been in the past.  At the same time don't get caught up in all the hype and hysteria.  The iPhone represents neither Armageddon nor The Rapture.  In the end we may find it to be . . . just a phone.

What do you think of the iPhone in the corporate IT world?

If this topic was of interest, you might also like these:

• eweek and iphone: fear and loathing on bizhack
• Enterprise IT is Conservative for a Reason on Mac Anarchy
• Letting Users Set the Business Tech Agenda
• Or the posts in the "Information Technology" category