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While Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) not exactly kicking down the corporate front door with its Xserve platform, there is every indication that the iPhone is making itself at home in the enterprise.
Increasingly, the iPhone is becoming the mobile device of choice for corporate types, and not because of its sex appeal -- or at least not because of its sex appeal alone. Several enterprise-friendly applications now available at the App Store allow users to perform basic productivity tasks, plus such related functions as editing documents, viewing and crunching numbers, and so on.
What's more, devotees insist that the iPhone performs these productivity and computing tasks even better than the BlackBerry, which has solid cred in the enterprise space.
"I have close to 40 different smartphones, and the only ones I carry on a regular basis are the iPhone and whatever device I happen to be testing at the moment," said Patrick Gilbert, CEO of 4SmartPhone, which has developed a site specifically for iPhone users at 4iPhone.net.
"It just is an amazing device," Gilbert told MacNewsWorld.
With version 3.0 of the iPhone nearly upon us, it's worth taking a new look at some of these offerings.
Productivity Tools
Apple's core productivity applications for the iPhone -- email, contact management, phone lists and so on -- are generally regarded as topnotch.
"They are easy to access and read," said Santiago Becerra, chairman and cofounder of MeLLmo, which just released RoamBi, an iPhone app to read numerical reports.
Becerra particularly likes the email application; there are complementary productivity apps as well.
"QuickOffice is a key one," Rob Walch, host of Today in iPhone, told MacNewsWorld. "It has a version of Excel, which you can edit, [and] Word, which you can also edit." Also, there is WiFi transfer functionality, so syncing the changes is easy, he said. At US$19.99, "it's a must-have."
FileMaker has released Bento for the iPhone, Walch also noted.
"If you are using FileMaker to manage your business, this is definitely something to look at," he said.
Other top productivity apps for iPhone users include Keynote Remote and Quicken, said Walch.
Soonr is a favorite of 4SmartPhone's Gilbert. It allows the synchronization of files between multiple computers, whether they are PCs or Macs.
"They are also stored in the cloud, as well as being available on the iPhone," he pointed out. "That means you can modify a file on the iPhone without downloading it."
Taskdata for the iPhone is another popular app, Gilbert continued. "It complements what the iPhone has built-in, by syncing the tasks and notes." On its own, the iPhone syncs only calendar and email.
The few missing functions that iPhone users have pined for -- cut and paste, searching and filtering email, the ability to send calendar invites or meeting invites -- will be available in version 3.0, Gilbert said.
Related Functionality
Also deserving of kudos are several apps that are not specifically designed for enterprise use but can be very handy in a business setting, Gary Steele, CEO of email security 
provider
Proofpoint, told MacNewsWorld.
Steele spends about 65 percent of his time on the road and recently became an iPhone convert.
"For business purposes, the iPhone suits me very well," he said. "It is easy to interface with email on the road, for instance, and allows me to be more productive -- so I don't have to boot up my computer as often."
Steele likes the apps aimed at travelers as well, such as Zagat for the iPhone, as well as the news features, such as The New York Times Mobile for the iPhone.
"It's the little things that can make a big difference in a successful trip," he said. "One time I was lost, and I used the iPhone to get walking directions to meet my client on time."
For his part, Becerra likes Bloomberg for the iPhone, he told MacNewsWorld.
Social networking apps for the iPhone are also big among business users, including Steele. "We are on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn -- all of them. We use Yammer for the iPhone to communicate with people. It's a corporate version of something similar to Twitter that stays behind the corporate firewall."
The Downside
Not all enterprises are enamored of the iPhone -- or at least the processes they must go through to adopt the iPhone, Newsgator's CEO J.B. Holston, observed.
"One thing we come across a lot is companies that don't want to go through the cumbersome processes that Apple has set out for downloading applications," Holston told MacNewsWorld.
"Developers have to make each app available separately through the store," he explained. "In a corporation's view, it is crazy to have internal applications only available via the [App] Store, and to require users to go through that configuration process just to get to those applications."
It's a method of distribution that an enterprise -- particularly a large global one -- has no interest in, Holston maintained.
"Apple has yet to set a process [in place] that is corporate-friendly," he concluded. "We have raised that with Apple, but I think they are distracted dealing with growth of the monster they have created with the iPhone."
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