Comment Re:I dont think businesses will care what it runs (Score 1) 315
I've supported Enterprise businesses in the past, and I support a multinational enterprise of over 100,000 users right now. As far as mobile space goes large business need the following now days:
1. Push Email (preferably no traffic going through inside the corporate firewall or at least proxied by something like ISA box) support for common email systems. This in reality means Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes. No, IMAP support for Yahoo will not fly, and neither will POP3.
2. High speed access - Edge will not be fast enough for this, think 3G speeds. Nobody really cares or uses Wi-Fi much (beyond gee-wiz tech toy stage) on these devices that I have seen (and well, most devices haven't had Wi-Fi till recently, hello BlackBerry).
3. Ability to remotely wipe device, set password policy on the device, manage devices remotely.
4. IM is becoming more relevant so corporate IM support (SameTime, LCS, etc...) is a plus.
5. Phone calls. Yes, this should be higher on the list, so sue me.
6. Ability to extend your corp apps on the device and having a full blown browser on the device. A lot of apps are either web based or becoming web based, so writing apps for the thing is not as important, but it's a bonus.
7. Cost - really, cost is really far down this list and $500 for iPhone is not a big deal (no, business users don't really NEED 8GB).
These are my own observation on mobile support in the Enterprise and I've observed it in companies from 3K users to 100K+.
1. Push Email (preferably no traffic going through inside the corporate firewall or at least proxied by something like ISA box) support for common email systems. This in reality means Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes. No, IMAP support for Yahoo will not fly, and neither will POP3.
2. High speed access - Edge will not be fast enough for this, think 3G speeds. Nobody really cares or uses Wi-Fi much (beyond gee-wiz tech toy stage) on these devices that I have seen (and well, most devices haven't had Wi-Fi till recently, hello BlackBerry).
3. Ability to remotely wipe device, set password policy on the device, manage devices remotely.
4. IM is becoming more relevant so corporate IM support (SameTime, LCS, etc...) is a plus.
5. Phone calls. Yes, this should be higher on the list, so sue me.
6. Ability to extend your corp apps on the device and having a full blown browser on the device. A lot of apps are either web based or becoming web based, so writing apps for the thing is not as important, but it's a bonus.
7. Cost - really, cost is really far down this list and $500 for iPhone is not a big deal (no, business users don't really NEED 8GB).
These are my own observation on mobile support in the Enterprise and I've observed it in companies from 3K users to 100K+.
