While Apple's plans to include iPhone support for Microsoft Exchange, push e-mail and a Cisco IPsec virtual private network client for access to private corporate networks had enterprise users rejoicing, the news most likely elicited a collective groan from IT departments charged with handling the iPhone's corporate support. Whether they like it or not, IT is the new Genius Bar of the enterprise.

Most analysts agree that large corporations will not be going all-iPhone anytime soon. The more probable scenario is Apple joining industry leaders Research In Motion and Windows Mobile in the corporate environment — a move that will increase both support costs and complexity for IT departments.

“You have Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm, and now we are adding one more,” said Brian Riggs, research director for Current Analysis. “It is a whole other issue there. Once a company is supporting these mobile users and the business applications are running on them, the IT staff, by default, is expected to support them. This is going to put a bit of pressure on the IT department to build up a skill set to troubleshoot applications running on the iPhone. A lot of these IT departments in corporations are either Microsoft bigots or Linux bigots, but they are very rarely Apple bigots.”

In an effort to change these opinions, Apple's iPhone Enterprise Beta program will allow IT staffers to test out iPhone 2.0 software in their corporate environments before its general release. Apple also has promised to deliver a mass configuration utility in June to allow administrators to set policies regarding passwords, VPN options and e-mail settings on the iPhones themselves.

NORTH AMERICAN NETWORK OPERATOR REVENUE AND CAPEX, Q4 07

WIRELINE REVENUE
$43.8 billion, up 1.2% year over year

WIRELINE CAPEX
$8.8 billion, up 12.4% year over year

CABLE MSO REVENUE
$17.3 billion, up 13.6% year over year

CABLE MSO CAPEX
$3.7 billion, up 8.6% year over year

MOBILE REVENUE
$38.6 billion, up 9.8% year over year

MOBILE CAPEX
$6.3 billion, down 11.4% year over year

Source: Ovum-RHK