iPhone now "a strategic enterprise platform" says Sybase

By Stuart Corner
Thursday, 05 November 2009 11:14

Technology

Sybase has released new device management, relational database synchronisation and mobile banking applications for the iPhone that it says extend functionality for both internal employees and external end users, enabling organisations to adopt iPhone as a strategic platform.

Sybase has added support for the iPhone to its Afaria mobile platform enabling enterprises to apply Afaria features for device management and policy enforcement to the iPhone. It has also ported its SQL Anywhere database and synchronisation technology to the iPhone saying that these "bring a proven, scalable way to extend information in enterprise relational databases to line of business applications running on iPhone devices."

iPhone support is one feature of a new release of Afaria, Afaria 6.5 due to be generally available in mid November. SQL Anywhere for the iPhone is presently in beta and is generally available. Support for mobile banking for the iPhone is now provided through the Sybase mBanking 365 platform.

To back up its claims for the iPhone, Sybase quotes Jack Gold, president of technology analyst firm, J Gold Associates, saying "While Apple has made significant progress in making the latest version of iPhone enterprise-ready, there are still a number of challenges in provisioning, management, security and application enablement. To achieve true enterprise-class capability, companies should deploy a comprehensive, open, third-party mobility platform capable of filling these gaps. Solutions like Sybase's mobility platform not only support companies looking to proactively deploy iPhones but also to respond to the rapidly growing population of information workers bringing personally-owned smartphones into the enterprise."

This article first appeared in ExchangeDaily, iTWire's daily newsletter for telecommunications professionals. Register here for your free trial.