Yes and no. It depends who you ask.

At the event, Apple revealed its enterprise and security strategy for the iPhone. These include, among other things, adding support for Microsoft Exchange. This will enable the iPhone to support push mob-e-mail, calendaring, and contacts, as well as global address lists and remote wipe—the last one addresses security concerns by allowing IT to remotely erase all data on a misplaced or stolen iPhone, so corporate secrets don’t get into the wrong hands.

Additional security feature will come to the iPhone in the form of support for the Cisco IPsec VPN, two factor authentication and enterprise-class Wi-Fi through support of the WPA2/802.1x standard.

According to the Forrester’s Simon Yates, Apple "tackled the thorniest monsters" towards getting the iPhone in the enterprise with these additions, reports The Wall Street Journal's Business Technology blog.

A CIO The Journal spoke to is a bit more wary, however: “I see enterprise on the map, but how far down that road is Apple willing to go?” (See the placement of "Enterprise" on the picture signifying Apple's iPhone SDK roadmap above.)

Potential problems that may remain for some businesses include the lack of support for IBM’s Lotus Notes or GroupWise from Novell—two major groupware and e-mail systems not covered in yesterday's news. Out of the gate, iPhone update 2.0 will only bring support for Microsoft Exchange to the iPhone.

Also, the iPhone is offered by only carrier in the U.S., AT&T. Some companies won’t be so fond of the idea of switching from their current mobile operator to another one just to start using the iPhone. Or, they simply may not even like AT&T and the service it provides..

And while in-house developers will be able to develop custom applications for their companies, the programs will only be available through "a secure, private page on the App Store accessible only by their employees,” according to an Apple press release.

That's not as flexible as most mobile application development systems and, you would think, a number of companies wouldn't want their homemade enterprise applications uploaded to an offsite location, no matter how secure Apple asserts the iPhone App Store is.

Then there's the matter of the huge investment companies have made in other types of smartphones and mobile devices as well as mob-e-mail systems, particularly RIM's BlackBerry solutions—the enterprise leader in such matters and Apple's main target.

Also, even if the iPhone/Exchange combo is to manage and more stable than other solutions, as Apple claims, how many companies would be willing to throw all they’ve invested (in equipment and man hours) away to start over from scratch?

And sure, the iPhone's virtual keyboard is as good as most of those come, but it's no match for most hardware-based QWERTYs, especially the one used in the BlackBerry. You can't type on the iPhone keyboard nearly as fast or with your eyes looking at something else like you can with a BlackBerry keyboard.

It's not for nothing the overuse injury some folks engender from overusing their smartphone's hard keyboard is often called BlackBerry-thumb. These keyboards are addictive because they are so easy to use. It is also what makes using them so productive. The limitations inherent to the iPhone's on-screen keyboard makes it far from addictive and, hence, as productive as a hardware-based QWERTY.

Perhaps, third-parties will jump in and fill the void with a hardware keyboard attachment for the iPhone? And, you never know, if enterprises want it enough, maybe a future iPhone will include one.

One last thing, while the iPhone’s Mail application is great to look at easy to use, it is missing some features, such as the ability to mass delete selected messages, common to other mob-e-mail applications. Maybe Apple will upgrade the Mail application when firmware 2.0, to be released to all iPhone users in June, brings the new enterprise capabilities outline yesterday to the iPhone. Let’s hope so.

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