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One often cited knock against the iPhone, especially as a tool for the enterprise, is the lack of support for push e-mail in Microsoft Exchange environments. This may change soon, however; possibly before the iPhone is even released this Friday, according to ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley.

Citing unnamed sources, Foley reports Apple has licensed the Exchange ActiveSync protocol from Microsoft for the iPhone.

If accurate, this would allow the iPhone to support wireless messaging (including push e-mail) and remote synchronization through an Exchange Server. Push e-mail delivers messages to a device as soon as it hits the mail server, a la BlackBerry, rather than a user having to pull messages down at scheduled intervals or as needed.

A number of mobile devices support Exchange-based push e-mail and synchronization. So while it is obvious that most Windows Mobile devices support push e-mail and synchronization in an Exchange environment today, Palm OS and Symbian/S60 Nokia smartphones incorporate ActiveSync to do so as well.

Incorporating ActiveSync into the iPhone would go a long way towards making the phone/iPod/Internet device more attractive to mobile professionals and enterprises. It would also give AT&T, the exclusive provider of the iPhone for the next five years in the U.S., additional avenues (outside of consumers) to profit from the device.

This development does nothing to alleviate other possible enterprise concerns regarding the iPhone, however: security, the lack of a hard keypad or keyboard, an internal battery, and an SDK for application development. Apple's opening up the iPhone to third-party development through Web 2.0 standards may not be enough for many companies wanting to develop in-house software.

Most importantly, the iPhone is Apple's first go at a mobile handset. And businesses, for good reason, tend to go with the tried and true first when deploying hardware, including smartphones.

Piper Jaffray's analyst Gene Munster predicts AT&T and Apple will sell 3.2 million iPhones before the end of the year. There are reports Apple will have just about that many iPhones on hand for Friday's launch.