Smartphone use adds to pressure on IT

The release of Apple’s second generation iPhone in Europe next month highlights the growing pressure on IT departments to integrate different types of smartphones into corporate mobile communications infrastructure.

Sales of all smartphones in Western Europe are set to increase from 113 million units sold in 2008, to 158 million in 2009, according to analyst Gartner. Many will be taken up by employees eager to have corporate email, application and intranet access enabled on one portable device.

This is likely to leave many IT departments with the task of configuring, securing and managing larger numbers of mobile voice and data devices based on many different mobile platforms ­ including iPhone, RIM’s BlackBerry, Windows Mobile or Symbian.

IT professionals will also be called on to organise back-end connectivity and synchronisation of personal information management software, and provide users with other portable applications.

By upgrading internet connectivity from GPRS to faster 3G, adding support for Microsoft Exchange-based email, and securing intranet connections using Cisco-engineered virtual private network connections, the iPhone 2.0 will become attractive to many business users.

But while Apple has made a software development toolkit available to software makers, the iPhone still lacks third-party security and management
applications widely available for rival platforms, and exclusive contracts with operators may continue to deter customers.