Gartner acknowledges iPhone enterprise mojo in new report
CIOs and IT pros pay money -- a lot of money -- for the opinions of the Gartner Group. Since I'm not shelling out $95 to buy "Gartner Changes It's iPhone Enterprise Recommendations," even though I'm sure it would be worth a giggle or two, I'll just point you to some folks who have read the new report. Short summary: author Ken Dulaney acknowledges that the circumstances leading to Gartner's original "burn it, it's a witch!" stance on the iPhone for enterprise use have changed, and with the additional support for Exchange and ActiveSync coming in June there are far fewer reasons to take a strict stand against iPhones in corporate settings.
Since Dulaney was the principal author of Gartner's first report, we commend him for sticking with the issue and setting the record straight. Now, about all those C-suite folks who already have iPhones... well, as Gartner describes the support levels required to handle idiosyncratic devices, there's "concierge," "appliance" and "platform" levels of support, with "concierge" being the most hands-on and resource-intensive (the iPhone is moving from "concierge" to "appliance" status with the June 2.0 update). How much do you want to bet that CEOs, CFOs and CIOs who go off the reservation and buy themselves iPhones and MacBook Airs are already getting, and will continue to get, "concierge"-level support from their IT departments? Yeah, that's what I thought too.
