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By Natasha Lomas, 4 July 2008 11:37

NEWS

Apple's 3G iPhone is poised to take the UK business world by storm, according to O2, which said corporate customers involved in beta testing are very interested in deploying iPhone 2.0.

The mobile operator, which is Apple's iPhone partner in the UK, launched the Edge device without offering a business tariff - enterprise customers wanting to use it had to sign up for a consumer contract. The 3G iPhone, however, will start life with a choice of business tariffs.

O2 UK's head of business sales, Ben Dowd, told silicon.com the company has undertaken beta testing of the 3G device with 15 corporate customers - including Citigroup, Logica and McDonald's. "The feedback has been very positive," he said. "[They've] said 'yes it's useable, yes we like it, yes can we find out more?'."

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Dowd added: "That sort of feedback in addition to the feedback that Apple got - from about 30 per cent of the Fortune top 500 customers - is all very positive. Absolutely this can be used in the business world."

Although he would not reveal figures for the number of enterprise users O2 signed up for the original device, Dowd said "a lot of business customers took it on the consumer tariff" - and, as of last week, 130,000 people had registered interest in the 3G iPhone of which "many" are business customers.

He said: "It gives us a gauge for a level of interest."

There are no signs enterprise users have concerns about any potential security implications of deploying iPhones, according to Dowd.

The iPhone 2.0 comes with a software update that not only includes enterprise-friendly licensing of Microsoft's ActiveSync protocol - for push email, calendar and contacts - but also supports Cisco IPSec VPN for secure transmission of data, and WPA2 Enterprise with 802.1x authentication for wi-fi network protection.

Yet analyst house Gartner has described this as a basic level of security for business. And rival mobile company RIM, which makes the BlackBerry smart phone and has a large enterprise customer base, touts the security credentials of its hardware as something which gives it a steely edge over the iPhone.

But O2 said corporate customers are not displaying any security concerns about the iPhone - and points to the fact even the US Army has been testing the 3G device.

Dowd said: "It's got the Cisco IP VPN sec which is… if you take O2 as an example, we're using it through our corporate server so we feel that the security is strong enough. Plus clearly the customers that Apple have contacted and we've contacted feel that the security piece is not a big issue."

However, one thing business customers will certainly have to weigh up is how they manage iTunes - as every iPhone user will need to have it running on their desktop for synching data.

Dowd said: "It's absolutely something that we need to communicate to corporate customers… so that they can get their IT support people to support that appropriately."

He added: "Ultimately it'll be [corporate customers] that decide whether they want their whole corporate base with iTunes on their desktops or whether they're going to limit it to a certain few - however they want to do it. And we can work with their IT support functions to make that happen."

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