CIOs leery of iPhone

CIO Charlie Pelton won’t be bringing Apple’s iPhone into his mortgage company’s network anytime soon. Pelton, of Market Street Mortgage Corp. in Clearwater, Fla., expects some of his users will want the endlessly hyped consumer device, but with the iPhone lacking support for Windows ActiveSync Pelton worries about providing secure access to Microsoft Exchange e-mail.

“Until they get the Windows ActiveSync worked out we’re not going to support it, because we don’t allow forwarding of business e-mails to third parties or outside addresses,” Pelton says. “If Apple and Microsoft work something out where they support Exchange then, yeah, it will be a secure device.”

Some published reports say Apple will indeed sort out the licensing issues necessary to make the iPhone compatible with Microsoft Exchange Server, though no official announcement has been made yet.

If that does happen, Pelton says he’d probably support the iPhone if employees bought it themselves. But Market Street isn’t likely to put any iPhones on the company dime, given that it costs up to $599, compared with about $250 for BlackBerries, Pelton says.

Market Street purchases BlackBerries and similar mobile devices for managers, but other employees who want one must pay for their own. Even BlackBerries, with their user-friendly keypads, aren’t used much by employees, he says.

“Most people think they’re going to use their devices more than they actually do after they get them,” Pelton says. “It sounds and looks really cool on TV and in the Web sites. Most of our folks don’t really use (even the BlackBerry) to send messages.”

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While Apple’s music, phone and Internet device may seem tailor-made for the consumer market, there’s no doubt business users and IT executives are paying attention to the iPhone.

IT executives across the country are being deluged with inquiries from employees who want to know whether they can use the iPhone to access work e-mail, the Wall Street Journal wrote last week.

CIO Scott Mills of the nonprofit Academy for Educational Development in Washington, D.C., says he plans to buy a couple iPhones so the IT staff can test them “and see what we’re up against.” The Academy supports BlackBerries and Windows Smartphones, but wants to see if the iPhone will integrate with e-mail through Internet Message Access Protocol or Post Office Protocol.

“Everything I’ve read (about the iPhone) to this point isn’t giving me good vibes,” Mills says.

Many Academy employees travel to Third-World countries, and Mills says he’s concerned that AT&T’s GSM network won’t be robust enough to support extensive roaming overseas.

Pelton and Mills say they have not faced a stampede of users demanding support for the iPhone. But both expect interest from employees after the phone and music player becomes available.

“Our users do push us on the consumer-based things, like Skype and IM,” Mills says.

One thing Mills is not concerned about is securing the iPhone.

“I don’t see it as being any more (difficult) than any of the hundreds of PDAs, cell phones and laptops we have to deal with,” he says. “I don’t see it as being any more of a liability than anything else.”