According to Wikibon's peer review, while consumers may pull the iPhone into the enterprise in an ad hoc manner, the scope, scale, and timing of enterprise IT iPhone (or related device) adoption will be most facilitated by the availability of a full-fledged browser on the device and most constrained by uncertainties regarding the availability of iPhone voice, data, and physical security services.

"Writing, deploying, and supporting mobile applications has been like pushing a badly frayed thread through the eye of a moving needle," said Peter Burris, Wikibon's research chief. "A full, easily used browser gives developers much more flexibility and makes applications much more friendly to users, which cuts support costs."

However, uncertainty regarding the iPhone's security services dampened the Wikibon community's enthusiasm for the iPhone. "We just don't know enough about the iPhone's support for essential voice, data, and physical security services," said Kaushik Das, a leading member of Wikibon's mobile enterprise community. "For example, services for remotely wiping the data from a lost or stolen phone are critical for any phone. For the iPhone, which can capture so much more data, wiping is essential for broad-scale enterprise deployment."

Ultimately, Wikibon's peers believe that the iPhone represents a significant discontinuity in the evolution of the mobile enterprise. "Even if another, more established supplier counters Apple's entry, it will do so with a device that looks and feels more like an iPhone than a smart phone," said Peter Burris. "In the enterprise, we just ended the era of mobile phones with computation capabilities and entered the era of hand-held computers with integrated voice."

The full summary of the Wikibon community's findings can be freely accessed, enhanced, or edited at http://www.wikibon.org/index.php?title=Apple_introduces_a_handheld_computer_with_a_phone

Wikibon is a worldwide community of practitioners, consultants, and researchers dedicated to improving the adoption of technology and business systems through an open source sharing of free advisory knowledge. The community uses a wiki to capture, manage, and distribute world-class, "how-to" storage and mobile enterprise knowledge. Founded by executives from market research firms like META Group (now Gartner) and IDC and launched in February, 2007, the community has been doubling in size monthly and already sports the largest web presence of any "boutique" research group.

Contact:
Peter Burris, co-Founder
Wikibon.org
650-641-0009
http://www.wikibon.org