iPhone Gains Some Support Among Corporate IT Departments

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Corporate IT support for the iPhone is on the rise, according to a report Monday at Tech Republic, though many CIOs and IT directors remain wary of the Apple smartphone’s security vulnerabilities.

Using an interesting (if not altogether scientific) polling strategy pioneered by Silicon.com, Tech Republic finds 42% of corporate IT departments are now willing to support the iPhone in its 3rd iteration, which is quite a swing from the near-universal skepticism with which corporate IT greeted the device upon its initial launch two years ago.

Results of the poll ought to be taken with a grain of salt, as the numbers themselves are based on the responses of just 12 individuals, but the comments included with the report are interesting nonetheless, and say as much about the way some corporations think as they do about Apple’s gadget itself.

Some corporate leaders, such as Mike Wagner, CIO of Stone & Youngberg in San Francisco seem to just get it. “The iPhone is one of the most innovative and revolutionary end-user products developed in the last 5 years,” Wagner said, adding “The support and training requirements for the iPhone are orders of magnitude less than the mobile OSes offered by competing vendors.” Wagner also noted “the general excitement and enthusiasm from the end users” in his company with iPhones, linking it directly to “a corresponding decrease in the perception that IT is a wet blanket that is an impediment to the use of consumer-friendly products.”

Still, the majority of corporate IT geeks don’t consider supporting the iPhone because, as Lisa Moorehead, Director of IT for MA Dept of Public Utilities put it, ““iPhones are not supported because they are considered personal gadgets.”

It’s interesting to note that among the CIOs and IT directors who report not supporting the iPhone, several quoted in the report placed the point of failure at service problems and bad coverage from AT&T.

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Perhaps the most telling comment of all, however, came from Chuck Elliott, IT Director for Emory University School of Medicine, who reported “we are finding more and more of our users are buying and using the device without assistance from IT.”

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