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Thursday, March 6, 2008
As both speculated last week and earlier reported that Exchange support was on its way by SvenOnTech, Apple has announced and demonstrated full support for Microsoft’s Direct-Push for Exchange server. Live from Building 4 on the Apple Campus, Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, created a new calendar event on a Mac in the room and added a new contact to boot. Within seconds, his iPhone had the updated information without any interaction from him.
No changes have been made to the iPhone’s easy to use Contacts or E-mail client. It’s all built into the iPhone firmware that will actively handle the Direct-Push. Apple has licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft to make all this “magic” happen right on the iPhone. Full Calendar, Contacts, and E-mail support is on the iPhone for Microsoft Exchange Direct-Push. Both Nike and Disney have been testing the Direct-Push feature internally and have had much success with it. The enterprise is now supported on the iPhone.
Users will have full ability to toggle on or off Exchange push for calendar, contacts, and e-mail right on the iPhone itself.
Other concerns from large companies has been data theft from stolen or misplaced iPhones. Apple now gives the ability to remotely wipe all data on the phone if such misfortune strikes an iPhone user. Cisco VPN, certificates and identities, WPA2/ 802.1x, and security policies round out the corporate enterprise wish list.
All these and the other reported updates (full third-party application support) will be available on iPhone firmware 2.0. All iPhone users will get the update for free and iPod touch users will have to pay a small upgrade fee for it. The SDK along with 2.0 beta goes out to developers today and the final release will be available at about the one year anniversary of the iPhone in “June”. So look for it just before Independence Day. 
