Role reversal: Apple’s the corporate standard for mobile

For years, “Apple” has been a dirty word in IT shops across the world, no more than tolerated in design and marketing departments. Real computers ran Windows and BlackBerrys, and in some segments, Windows Mobile devices could be conceived for use in messaging. When the iPhone came out in 2007, it was laughed at as a misguided toy from a consumer company that didn’t get “real” business. The same was said in 2010 when the iPad was announced.

But 2011 was the tipping point. iPhones now have more users than BlackBerrys within corporate environments, and Aberdeen Group mobile analyst Andrew Borg notes that many organizations have figured out how to handle the Apple security model comfortably, lessening the dependence on BlackBerry Enterprise Server outside of a small percentage users with special security requirements. Additionally, iPads became the corporate standard, with Windows-like market share, for tablets the same year. In fact, Aberdeen Group says that 96 percent of businesses have at least one iPad in use. Who’d have thunk it?

IT certainly didn’t drive for that outcome. I don’t believe Apple did, either. After all, it took three major OS revisions before Apple brought business-level security and manageability to the iPhone. I’ve long thought that Apple wanted the iPad to be its entry into the business computer market, but I’m less sure after a recent conversation with Oliver Bussmann, SAP’s CIO.

Bussmann recalls SAP chairman Hasso Plattner saying when the iPad was announced in February 2010 that SAP should be a first mover in supporting it upon release that spring. Plattner’s prediction: It would become a corporate standard. However, when Bussmann followed up with Apple, he detected no desire for it to position the iPad as a business device. (He detected no opposition to business use, either.)

It was users — executives, marketing pros, salespeople, even some IT pros, and others who valued connectivity and lightweight computing — that brought first the iPhone, then the iPad into business. The BlackBerry stayed essentially the same as the iPhone continued to gain capabilities in multiple areas — Web, applications, communications — and people gravitated to the device that did more and did so with panache. IT resisted, but there are more users than IT people, and when the folks in the field and the folks with manager titles decide to adopt a technology, it gets adopted.

Regardless of Apple’s original intentions, in 2010 it put a sufficient base of security and management into iOS, thus allaying IT’s security and governance objections. Apple saw its mobile devices could grow in corporate environments just as they had in personal environments, and the company took the steps necessary to get that market.

Of course, despite such corporate enablement, Apple has not exactly acted like a typical enterprise provider. You don’t get the kind of product support that a Hewlett-Packard or Dell provides, for example, nor the kinds of product road maps that lets IT think it has some control over its technology direction. Road maps rarely cover the reality that later occurs, but it still feels good to be inside the tent, doesn’t it?

Even here, Apple has quietly gone corporate enough to eliminate the objection. For a small fee, any business can join Apple’s developer program, giving it several months’ head start on new versions of iOS (and Mac OS X), though not on new devices. The company has worked with multiple consulting firms such as Unisys to provide the enterprise support that Apple doesn’t want to or can’t deliver itself.

Apple does offer basic business help on its website, and it has a business app store that addresses basic issues of bulk purchases and license management, though not more sophisticated situations such as those involving contractor and customer distribution. It now also has business specialists in some of its Apple Stores. In addition, Apple has quietly approached hundreds of companies and government agencies to pitch the iPad as a corporate device and gather feedback as to what businesses want from it (and the iPhone). It’s actively listening to corporate needs, even if it doesn’t tip its hand or act as if it cares.

Where does this lead? Apple, I have no doubt, will continue to eschew any public image of catering to corporate needs as more than incidental to broad individual use. In other words, it will act as if it’s enabling iPhones and iPads to satisfy the needs of individuals who also want to use them at work, not to satisfy the needs of businesses per se.

You can thank the late Steve Jobs for that approach; he saw Apple badly fumble its attempt to compete with Windows in the corporate sphere in the 1990s, after he had been fired from Apple, and he was adamant about not going there again. Of course, Jobs also saw what was happening on the ground, and he quietly changed the iPhone and iPad from being consumer-only devices to being consumer-centric devices that could work in the business sphere. That wasn’t as much of an about-face as his 2007 proclamation that the iPhone didn’t need apps but could do everything from the Web, only to introduce the App Store in 2008 and proclaim apps as a key iOS advantage over Web apps. However, it shows Apple will adjust its strategy even if it doesn’t acknowledge the shift.

With Jobs gone, Apple may be more visibly open to corporate support, but it will remain on Apple’s terms. IT is in a position of having Apple products as a key part of the corporate portfolio, but maintaining an arm’s-length relationship with Apple itself.

I’m convinced IT will get over it. On a day-to-day basis, IT doesn’t have much to do with individual iPhones and iPads; IT’s focus is on using Exchange and mobile device management (MDM) tools, on ensuring appropriate permissions for data that might end up on an iOS device, and on reworking network and other resources to support the change in information access from fixed PC terminals to a range of mobile devices led by the iPhone and iPad.

Frankly, Apple’s rise as the corporate mobile technology standard is a good thing for IT, as it will help in the transition to the post-PC or “consumerization of IT” world that is emerging, where IT is a key part of the technology management fabric but not the entire fabric itself.

This article, “Role reversal: Apple’s the corporate standard for mobile,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com.