Hello, my name is Matt and I will be regularly contributing to the Unwired Revolution blog. On behalf of Unwired Revolution, I look forward to sharing our company’s experiences with established and emerging technologies that are designed to empower an enterprise’s remote workforce to communicate efficiently in the field. Since we focus on larger organizations, there will be particular attention paid to specific elements of these solutions like policy-based management, security, compatibility, adoptability, and deployment.

My first post explores a paradigm shift occurring in the enterprise smart phone world, and one software company’s approach to addressing the associated challenges.

The definition of “smart phone” has been evolving rapidly over the past number of years.  Since the release of the iPhone, the smart phone has transformed from a mostly business only tool to one with many personal use attributes.  This includes the integration of music, photos, video, and social media applications (to name a few) across several platforms like iPhone and Android.

Given everything these next-generation phones can do, people no longer want to (or necessarily need to) carry two devices around for work and personal use.  In fact, many people are willing to buy their own smart phone (and pay for the monthly bill) for the “personal” functionality they get out of having the device.

This presents an interesting conundrum for enterprise IT.  All of the sudden, the company doesn’t have to purchase and maintain smart phones for their employees, nor foot the entire bill for mobile voice and data usage.  However, this means putting valuable and sensitive corporate data on an employee-owned device, which introduces a new set of logistical and legal challenges.  What happens if an employee gets fired and that user possesses sensitive or proprietary company data on their device at time of termination?  How do enterprises keep that data from ending up in the wrong hands when they don’t own the device upon which it resides?

To answer these questions, let’s explore the specific device that has brought this issue to light: Apple’s iPhone.

When it comes to a mobile business-ready tool, the iPhone definitely fits the bill. The iPhone OS has an excellent suite of built-in PIM (Personal Information Management) applications that allow employees to access their Microsoft Exchange contacts, calendars, and email remotely and with ease.  In my opinion, these apps are second to none in terms of form, function, and usability.  For enterprises with a Microsoft Exchange server, iPhone OS natively includes an implementation of ActiveSync to securely and reliably exchange this PIM data OTA (Over the Air).  It also provides the ability for an IT admin to instantly and completely remotely erase all iPhone data, including all corporate digital assets, with the issuance of an aptly named “Kill Pill”.

Problem solved, right?  Not quite.  Remember this is a personal device, which likely includes not only company owned data, but personal data as well.  The kill pill wipes out everything, including that last known picture taken of Grandpa Ed.  Under the right conditions, erasing that personal data could lead to serious legal repercussions.  As a whole, this issue represents a fundamental shift and blur of corporate versus individual data ownership and device management. Whereas traditionally a company had every right to nuke an issued device and everything on it, that doesn’t hold true any longer under this model.

Sybase is tackling the personal versus corporate data issues with their iAnywhere Mobile Office for iPhone solution. The concept is pretty simple: digitally separate corporate data by placing all company-owned data into a “sandbox” on the device that the enterprise has full control over. In the specific case of the iPhone, this sandbox is an iPhone app that has its own mail store, calendar, and task list. The IT admin is able to control virtually every aspect of the application’s capability through over-the-air template-driven policy management. This includes what data to push, how much, and other access and usage restrictions. When it comes time to lock out the user from company data, a simple command prevents the iAnywhere app from launching and erases all information stored by the app. Of course this leaves all other data on the iPhone completely intact.

The only PIM data that is not stored in the sandbox is the contact list, although it remains accessible from both inside and outside of the iAnywhere application. iAnywhere actually stores corporate contacts in the iPhone’s native address book instead of its own data store (where other application components are kept). I believe Sybase intentionally programmed the application this way to simplify dialing and caller recognition for voice calls on the iPhone.

Overall, Sybase’s iAnywhere Mobile Office product does an excellent job with the sandbox concept to separate corporate and personal data, however it takes a toll on the user experience. Instead of being able to use Apple’s very well designed Mail and Calendar applications (you can still use their Contacts app), users must use the mail and calendar functions within the iAnywhere Mobile Office app. From our experiences testing these functions, combined with feedback from a few pilot customers, we unfortunately found them to be usable only under ‘ideal’ conditions.

For instance, when composing an email with Mobile Office, you can add recipients (even search against the corporate directory), compose, and then send the message. However, if you need to switch to a different app, or receive a phone call, you have no way of saving your message as a draft to come back to it later. Instead, you lose the entire message (yes, even when someone calls you). Besides this pretty glaring flaw, there are a few other minor annoyances that any user familiar with Apple’s iPhone Mail app will miss dearly in the iAnywhere mail version including:

• No support for mail folders
• No landscape mode for typing
• No signature support

On the calendar side, entries are very basic permitting only event title, location, time/date, and notes. There is no way to set alarms, repetition, invitees, or availability like you can in the Apple Calendar app. Accepting or sending meeting invitations is also not possible.

There is good news for those who miss their Exchange task list on their iPhone…task lists are supported in Mobile Office! The task list is actually pretty robust, supporting priorities, start and end dates, notes and categories. This feature will be met with delight for several users who have been missing this feature on the iPhone.

In summary, Sybase did a great job responding to an obvious need as a segment of the smart phone market is branching away from complete enterprise device management. Although the usability elements of the app need improvement, the overall solution architecture is secure and easy to manage by IT. With client side improvements underway, coupled with new capabilities being introduced by iPhone OS 4, I remain optimistic about Sybase’s solution for supporting this new model of enterprise device and data management.