Many people are undecided or confused about the new “enterprise” features of the iPhone. Blackberry and Microsoft Windows Mobile phones have had these features for years now and Apple comes to the plate with their solution. The iPhone 3G (and 2.0 the software version) has hit the streets.

Apple decided to implement Microsoft's Active Sync/Direct Push on in the 2.0 version of the iPhone software. The new “enterprise” feature, that Microsoft calls Direct Push, is the Microsoft protocol that supports “BlackBerry” like e-mail, calendar, tasks and contacts syncing wirelessly.

I was intending to steer clear of the iPhone vs. Windows Mobile vs. BlackBerry issue, but since you asked… I am a long time PDA user (Apple Newton was my 1st). I have not been back to Apple since I retired my Newton for a Kyocera Palm based phone. After that I had several Windows Mobile phones, a BlackBerry Pearl, and the BlackBerry Curve is my current weapon of choice. I'm planning to go iPhone 3G. Why not now?

AT&T and Apple have made a mess of it during the first few days. It seems that neither company expected to sell a million units in 3 days. They can't get the phones registered on the network as fast as they are selling them. The plan from AT&T and Apple had been to sell 150 thousand in the Friday through Sunday period. I am sure this will get worked out quickly, but you might want to wait a week or so and let AT&T and Apple sort it out.

Tip for existing iPhone users: A free upgrade is available for older iPhones.  
Just download the new iTunes 7.7 and it will update the software for you.

What does it take to get the iPhone’s enterprise features working?

  

If your company has Exchange 2003 or 2007 Server, then you have most of the technology needed to support Direct Push. In addition to Exchange Server there are other requirements to implement Direct Push.

Direct Push Requirement for the iPhone:

The hardware and software are the easy part.  If you have an iPhone and an Exchange Server, there are only a few components you need (details are below). The more difficult part is the security. To get this done your network administrator will need to get a secure certificate for your Microsoft Exchange Server. You will also need port 443 open on your firewall directed to the Exchange Server.