14 DAY TRIAL // First the iPhone was bad for business users because it did not support third party applications. After that was proven not to be the case, the iPhone was a poor choice for business users because it was not compatible with Microsoft's Office documents. After Apple showed the iPhone opening Word and Excel documents effortlessly, the issue became Outlook incompatibility. Now it looks like this is also about to become a non-issue.
Microsoft has updated Exchange 2007 and the latest version should fix various issues that would have potentially caused problems with the iPhone when receiving mail from an Exchange server. The third update to Exchange Server 2007, known as Rollup 3, addresses issues customers experienced when using Apple's Mail. The issue is the difficulties Exchange 2007 had with IMAP4 protocol implementation, which are at least partially expected to be addressed with Exchange 2007 Rollup 3.
While the exact version of Mail that is used on the iPhone, and its features, is unclear outside of Apple, this update should decrease the possibility compatibility issues. Many have suspected that Apple will approach Microsoft in order to get the iPhone working properly with the proprietary technologies, but it looks like Apple is taking the other route. Instead of licensing technology from Microsoft, Apple is pretty much forcing Microsoft to better support open standards. Pretty much everyone wins.
Many security experts have spoken out against the iPhone, saying that it is an intruder that is not compliant with the current setup of the IT departments. What these experts forget is that not too long ago, the Blackberry was another such intruder and it did not fail because of this, it just got the system to change. The iPhone looks like it is shaping to be much bigger than RIM's handheld so it should be able to pull off the same feat.