iPhone not built for the Enterprise – but I.T. will still have to deal with IT

Scaling / December 14, 2007 / Alykhan Jetha

Forrester Group analysts Benjamin Gray and Robert Whiteley illustrate my point on why Apple should stick to the consumer and small business markets with his latest piece on why the iPhone is not for the Enterprise. This is backed up with a few well-argued qualifications, by Larry Dignan at ZDNet.

The needs of the enterprise are diametrically opposed to the needs of the individual or small business. It is almost impossible (if not totally impossible) to make a person drool for something and then have that same thing be enterprise friendly. If you notice, Steve Jobs likes to make people drool for his gizmos – be it laptop, desktops or iPods or iPhones. That’s Apple’s magic.

If you look at history (going back to the NeXT days), you will notice that Steve Jobs likes strong foundational bases – foundations that give him flexibility later on. This is why we have Unix as Mac OS X’s underpinnings and why we have flexible languages such as Objective-C (no flame wars please). This forward thinking makes one think that he is reaching for the enterprise or he wants to – but he is not. He is reaching for the future.

Somehow, the enterprise will have to adapt to iPhones and Macs, because as noted by the WSJ, like it or not, the future will not be denied.

Until next time…
AJ

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