iPhone and the EnterpriseiPhone and the Enterprise
With all the talk about the iPhone-- AT&T's enterprise pricing plan , and IBM's announcement of Lotus Notes for the iPhone , it seems increasingly clear that you're going to be supporting more iPhone users, not fewer. That may not be an ideal situation, and the iPhone may be lacking in terms of enterprise features/functions, but, to paraphrase Woody Allen, the heart of the mobile phone user wants what it wants, so you'll be supporting a cadre of iPhone users no matter what.
January 24, 2008
With all the talk about the iPhone--AT&T's enterprise pricing plan, and IBM's announcement of Lotus Notes for the iPhone, it seems increasingly clear that you're going to be supporting more iPhone users, not fewer. That may not be an ideal situation, and the iPhone may be lacking in terms of enterprise features/functions, but, to paraphrase Woody Allen, the heart of the mobile phone user wants what it wants, so you'll be supporting a cadre of iPhone users no matter what.
With all the talk about the iPhone--AT&T's enterprise pricing plan, and IBM's announcement of Lotus Notes for the iPhone, it seems increasingly clear that you're going to be supporting more iPhone users, not fewer. That may not be an ideal situation, and the iPhone may be lacking in terms of enterprise features/functions, but, to paraphrase Woody Allen, the heart of the mobile phone user wants what it wants, so you'll be supporting a cadre of iPhone users no matter what.That was why I posted a December BCR article on wireless telecom expense management. The author, Robert Harris, has a lot of insights on the specifics of TEM packages for wireless and wireline services, but he also provides a solid context for these management software systems. Specifically, he talks about how the typical wireless rate plan, at least on the voice side, is exactly the opposite of the dynamic that enterprises are used to: Instead of being rewarded for exceeding your minutes commitment, you're penalized for it.
I was interested in the data side of the iPhone for business plans as well. Here's what Eric Zeman at Over The Air writes:
You can now pony up $45 per month to get unlimited data, visual voicemail and a stingy 200 text messages. Bumping the plan up to $55 gives you 1,500 text messages. For $65, you get all-you-can-eat everything. That's Internet, messages, data, etc.
What piqued my interest here was something that I didn't cover in yesterday's post on the new Andrew Odlyzko net neutrality paper, because the topic was a little off the main point there, but it's relevant here.
In his paper, Andrew roughs out some ballpark figures on cost per MB for various services. Here's his estimates:
Wireless texting: $1,000/MB
Wireless voice: $1/MB
Wireline voice: 10 cents/MB
Residential Internet: 1 cent/MB
Backbone Internet: .01 cent/MB
That fat $1,000/MB number for SMS is just screaming out for someone to come along and undercut on the (hopefully) newly-opened cellular networks.
