Apple last week announced OS 4.0, it's latest iPhone and iPad operating system. This release looks like Apple is starting to appreciate the Enterprise and not just the consumer markets.
Since the release of Apple OS 1.0 in July 2007 there have been 4 (including the 4.0 release) releases of the operating system, all heavily focused on the consumer market, but the latter one looking like it has matured to the enterprise market.
So what are the important new enterprise features and what do they mean?
- Wireless application distribution. That means no more iTunes on corporate PCs. That's good news.
- Exchange 2010 support. Important for shops moving to the latest Microsoft products.
- Application data encryption. This is a big deal when putting corporate data, including attachments, on personal devices.
- SSL VPN support for Cisco and Juniper routers. This upgrade makes it easier to open up the corporate network to these devices.
What's still missing?
- There's no Flash support. This is a drag, and Apple seems determined to avoid support this popular media format in favour of HTML5
- No policy or software push. This is one of RIM's biggest benefits and differentiators. Apple needs to solve this problem and doesn't yet appear to have done so.
- Network bandwidth management tools. Another of RIM's big differentiators and something Apple appears to be ignoring.
From what I've seen so far, it looks like software and policy push are the only things still missing from the list in most regulated firms and governments. In other words, employees will still have to click the update button to get the latest policies and application versions. But they will no longer have to sync with iTunes.
dataplex have gone Apple, and I have to say it was a great move.