If you've been begging your business' IT overlords to upgrade your old Blackberry beater to some new iPhone hotness, you might soon get your wish, as Apple has sorted out a method for enterprise iOS users to create customizeable App Store filters.
One of the biggest issues holding back many large businesses from issuing their employees iPhones or iPads is the lack of control that enterprise IT can wield over what apps can and cannot be loaded onto an iOS device. Afterall, while giving your employees access to Documents to Go and Dragon Dictation in order to increase their mobile productivity, those gains could be quickly thwarted by an unsanctioned installation of Angry Birds or Plants vs. Zombies.
According to Patently Apple, thanks to Apple's new customizeable App Store access gateway, enterprise users can now provide their employees with iOS devices, secure in the knowledge that only the applications that they have sanctioned can be loaded on to a company-owned Apple mobile device.
It'll be interesting to see whether the advent of this technology will allow Apple to creep further into the hearts and minds of enterprise users in the months to come.
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soundguyrob
January 22, 2011 at 5:18pm
I can tell you how my employer issued iPhones to it's 25 employees:
1. If you wanted the iPhone, you paid for it yourself. (Or take a free Blackberry)
2. You set up your own apple ID with your own credit card.
If you leave the company, it cost's you another $50 to keep your phone. You will have to set up your own account with AT&T.
This sounds like a drag, but, I rcvd a 3GS the week it was shipped, and I have never paid a monthly bill. If I were to lose my phone, I would pay the $600 for a replacement (A handful of the field guys found this out the hard way)
If I want an app or music, it goes on my Apple ID I had years before.
