iPhone 3.0 - Features in detail
Push, cut and paste, integrated maps, and enhanced calendar synch could all help to make iPhone users more productive at work.
Push, cut and paste, integrated maps, and enhanced calendar synch could all help to make iPhone users more productive at work. But administrators and enterprise application developers were hoping for a couple more capabilities that did not appear, namely background processing and device management tools.
The push capability is one of the most interesting for enterprise application developers, said Senthil Krishnapillai, director of product management for Sybase's enterprise mobility group. It could allow Sybase, which has a partnership with SAP, to push CRM (customer relationship management) notifications to iPhone users. For example, a potential sales lead could call in to a main office and the lead could be pushed out to a sales person in the field for immediate attention.
The iPhone 3.0 software will also allow maps to be included in other applications on the phone, which could prove useful to many businesses. For example, engineers at Herrera Environmental Consultants use iPhones and would find an application useful that would let them take photos that are automatically tagged with a location.
But the new iPhone software still lacks capabilities that enterprises need. "One thing I haven't seen is on the management side. We haven't heard of a strategy for how to manage these devices," Krishnapillai said.
Management tools also can't work effectively without background processing, he said. While management tools can use the push notification, that still requires the recipient to take some action. With background processing, the iPhone could have a service like Microsoft's Windows Update to automatically update devices.
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