Can Apple Woo the IT Department?

My colleague, Michael Hickins, has an interesting view of Apple's future as tied to the iPhone's use in business. I'd agree without hesitation that Apple needs more than just consumer acceptance for the iPhone to make it a dependable long-term company strategy. But the company has a major hurdle: gaining the IT department's trust and acceptance.

That may seem a silly statement, given that Macs have been in companies for many years. But that has largely been a special case with IT. I remember writing for MacWEEK in the late 1990s and finding it increasingly difficult to identify companies that used a significant number of Macs in business operations for three major reasons I can think of:

• Macs have always been more expensive to procure than Windows-based PCs and IT departments have limited budgets.
• Replacement parts were far more expensive than PC parts.
• Even if you want to argue total cost of ownership, the IT shops were set up to support Windows, and if a company had a lot of Windows machines, justifying the relatively few Macs became increasingly difficult.

For the iPhone to come in as a mobile device of choice would mean that the IT departments would eventually have to support them -- both in the sense of providing user support and also making the devices a technical standard. But many companies have already moved to Blackberrys, and getting them to make another shift after the investment in equipment and in creating a support infrastructure is going to be tough.

However, there's a much bigger problem in getting that acceptance: email. One of the major reasons executives have mobile devices is so they can get access to email as well as to company networks. Blackberry maker RIM has enterprise-focused software that can help the devices tie in with corporate networks and that works with Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, or Novell GroupWise. This is an absolute bottom-line requirement. If a device cannot get executives into their email, it simply cannot get broad IT support. Furthermore, a device will need to provide access to necessary corporate applications.

Apple has software, and some large companies use it, but there isn't the same extensive through-the-wringer experience that will currently give enough companies the level of confidence they need. According to Apple, iPhone 2.0 software "supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, delivering push email, calendar, and contacts." But that's not the same breadth of support as RIM has. Furthermore, the theory that Apple's products are impervious to hacking is cracking. Where is an IT person going to look when it comes to evaluating Apple's capability in remote access software? Problem-riddled MobileMe?

By no means is Apple out of the contest. The iPhone has captured many users, and that's a vital part of the success equation. But until Apple can capture the minds and hearts of most IT departments, adding business apps to the roster won't add the corporate business bulking up the company would so like to have.