Lotus Notes and the iPhone
I hope that a good night’s rest has allowed most of you to think a bit more clearly about the issue of IBM and the iPhone.
I am not a consultant. I work for a corporation (a rather large financial institution). I have worked for at most (if not all) of the large Lotus Notes shops in my area (all of which are financial/insurance institutions).
Most of the Lotus Notes shops I know of are large. They are typically insurance companies, banks, health institutions, etc. Do you really want the guardians of your private data connecting their toy iPhone to the corporate network? They lock PC’s down to the point where you cannot connect a palm pilot, use a thumbdrive, or even write to a CD/DVD. They are not going to allow iTunes and 32gb ipod/iphones. You (as the consumer) should be relieved that we take your data and privacy seriously.
Our people get Blackberries. Blackberries without a camera. These Blackberries are so locked down it is not even fun to have one. It checks mail and calendar and it’s a phone too. The CEO with an iPhone probably carries his or her blackberry as their glorified pager. I’m guessing the two will never meet and the CEO is smart enough to know why.
Should IBM invest resources into writing cool apps for the iPhone? I have offered 100 times to write applications for our corporate Blackberries. I offer up applications as simple as the corporate directory to as complex as a pipeline application. Nobody wants it.
I’m sorry you consultants can’t happily sync your Lotus Notes calendar to your iPhone. But I am not sorry enough to take resources away from anything else that Lotus is doing to try and gain marketshare by making their software better, faster, and cheaper than the competition.
Jaime
June 12th, 2008 at 8:33 am #
Agreed. Granted there is not a lot of call for mobile apps in my area. The extent of the “need” for mobile computing is calendaring and mail.
It is usually sufficient to allow the CEO to receive forwarded emails so he can show every one how “techie” he is.
Any other iPhone support is limited to non-corporate/business related questions like “How do I load iTunes without bricking my phone”.