The "Other Side" of Enterprise Mobility

Ephraim Schwartz at InfoWorld wrote a good piece in Reality Check called "Will the iPhone Force Apple to Change Course?"  While my earlier blog entry "Enterprise Customers are People Too" examines the appeal of products such as the iPhone to the enterprise users, this article examines what it takes to make solutions appealing to enterprise IT managers.  Mr. Schwartz mentions the need for the iPhone to support applications and special corporate needs, beyond the promised support for Outlook Exchange, remote locking for stolen phones, and VPN.

The reality is that both are important. Companies that want to win in the enterprises must pass both tests, for the end users and for the IT department.  That is a tough lesson for companies whose roots are at one end of the spectrum or the other, because winning at the opposite end can require entirely new capabilities and the risk of culture clashes among the enterprise types and the consumer types.

The winners find a way to make it work.  Some examples that come to mind are Blackberry who elegantly solved the security concerns of the corporate IT group while giving users a decent smartphone, and Salesforce.com who created an easy-to-use, intuitive sales force automation tool while making IT departments comfortable with keeping strategically-important data outside the firewall.