(This is a snapshot of my old weblog. New posts and selected republished essays can be found at raganwald.com.)
Monday, August 13, 2007
The people you have to please in the enterprise market are the ones purchasing and supporting the products, not the poor schmucks who use them
One of my favorite dumb questions from the iPhone launch [is]: “Why hasn’t anyone made a phone like this before?” The answer is that every other phone manufacturer is tied up in the enterprise market in one way or another.
The “dream phone” for the enterprise looks quite different than the iPhone. It works with the corporate VPN. It does Exchange. It supports device-wide encryption and remote deletion of data on lost devices. It’s available in several compatible forms from multiple manufacturers. It has a well-defined public roadmap for hardware and software. It can be backed up and restored en masse, preferably over the network. If it has a camera, it can be disabled. The battery can be removed and replaced. And on and on.
Maybe around item two hundred in this list there might be a bit about the people who will actually use these enterprise dream phones tolerating the things. Really, as long as they don’t openly revolt, it’s fine. The people you have to please in the enterprise market are the ones purchasing and supporting the products, not the poor schmucks who actually have to use them.
—John Siracusa, Stuck on the enterprise
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When the iPhone was released, some of my co-workers were noting its enterprise-unfriendly features and crowing about how this was no Blackberry killer and would never sell to business people. And I had to explain to them that (in my opinion) that was not at all the market that Apple was after. When I was at the Ruby Hoedown this past weekend, it seemed like every other guy in the room was toting an iPhone. I think Apple will be just fine.
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