macnn/electronista
01/17/2008, 2:55pm, EST
Thursday, January 17thAT&T to offer iPhone to business accounts on Jan 21
AT&T will soon announce the acceptance of iPhones under corporate and business accounts, an anonymous source claims. The announcement is expected to happen on January 21st, and already has some rumored details: among these is the continuity of corporate discounts, which may serve to lure in a number of customers. There may however be some restrictions, such as having a data plan at or above $25 a month. It is also said that there will be no equipment discounts, and buyers will have to run through a pre-activation process before the normal one in iTunes.
If true, the announcement may help ease the iPhone into business circles, where it has met fading resistance since launch. Initial concerns revolved around the security of the device, but the major obstacle is now seen to be compatibility with Microsoft's dominant mail technology, namely Exchange Server and Outlook. Aside from being used by many corporations, Exchange is also capable of delivering "push" e-mail, meaning its users do not have to check for messages manually. [via Boy Genius Report]
Filed under: iPhone, enterprise
Other story tags: AT&T, e-mail
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I dare say there are few jobs where one's livelihood depends on replying to an email within 15 minutes.
As far as push email, that's necessary, but another corporate necessity the iPhone is lacking is the ability to remotely erase and disable the device, should the user lose it.
PUSH is a technology that some IMAP accounts have that tells the client that you have a new email without having the client checking on the server to find out. So it creates a real time experience for the user to respond to emails as soon as they are sent.
To get really technical(and theoretical), it involves the use of an "agent" since a server by nature does not send out data unless it is asked for it, an agent runs as a 3rd party between the client and server and keeps the heartbeat between the two constantly updated.