A lot has changed since the iPhone debuted in 2007, including the operating system and the smartphone industry as a whole. This Computer World report says that some of the major updates in each new iteration of the iPhone operating system (iOS) have made it easier to manage and secure Apple’s mobile platform.
“With each passing summer, Apple has polished the business and enterprise features of iOS. It has added Exchange support, support for remote wipe, security and configuration policies (either through Exchange or with configuration profiles that can be loaded onto each device), VPN options and encryption — both whole-device encryption on the iPhone 3GS and targeted app data encryption in iOS 4.
“While each of the changes was an improvement, it wasn’t until this year’s arrival of iOS 4 — and the iPhone 4 itself — in June that Apple included a new mobile device management (MDM) service that companies could use. As a result, businesses finally got something sorely needed for enterprise iPhone adoption to make sense: the ability to more easily deploy, manage and monitor iPhones used by employees — a capability that has long made Research In Motion’s BlackBerry one of the most trusted mobile platforms.”
