By Carl Ford
My IT friends on Wall Street have always looked at the IPhone as an annoyance. Most of them were not Apple friendly to begin with, and have shown much reluctance to allow the iPhone into the support system.
In other words you can get one, but you are on your own, which actually is probably where you would be anyway. However, I would like to point out as I survey the world market, the iPhone may be the first phone consistently available and offered worldwide. Traditionally, local phones can roam internationally, but they are not the same all over. Apple is starting a new trend line here to follow.
However with RIM & AT&T's Bold and RIM & Verizon's Storm, the Enterprise Architect has something they can point to that is "kewl" enough to hold the dogs back. And now that the bloom is off the rose, the iPhone has some interesting quirks that I think will allow the IT folks to hold it back.
Here are the notes from the family test lab.
Number 1. Hanging up the phone is actually hard. Disconnects have to be forced otherwise you find that you are hearing that wonderful tone to tell you there is a phone off hook without a call.
Number 2. Texting does not get the benefit of the landscape keyboard. In other words the iPhone is friendlier to email even though its client base probably likes text better. The other complaints are not particularly relevant to a discussion about the enterprise.
The RIM devices are not without problems, either. Friends with the Storm complain that some keys on the visual keyboard are impossible to click. So while the experience starts great, the frustration with the keyboard is problematic. However, the pressures of downsizing results in a number of RIMs being returned to the Enterprise and contracts to be bought out or renegotiated as a group.
On Wall Street, the Enterprise Architect has other issues to cope with. Like the auditing of the seat reduction as the company downsizes. With the tragedy in Mumbai, and thousands of employees being let go, the centralized directory of employees and their functions are going to be critical to continue productivity.
And yet with all this turmoil, some opportunity exists.
Whatever trials were going on or tools were being rolled out, if they were justified before these turbulent times, the loss of seats provides a savings that allows the roll out to be seen as a necessary supportable upgrade. Microsofts' OCS will be a beneficiary, but video systems from Cisco and Polycom are right now still leading the pack.
The good news for the employees involved in these trials is that they are being kept to implement these tools. And who knows they may become consultants after the project is over.