WHEN IT COMES TO

computers in the workplace,

Apple's

Microsoft

Dell

Hewlett-Packard

But an unintended inroad to corporate America might've materialized over the summer with the advent of the iPhone. While Apple's innovative smartphone is targeted at consumers, well-appointed executives have set aside their BlackBerrys, a meeting-room staple made by Research in Motion, long enough to take notice. Could the iPhone be the gadget that returns Apple to the enterprise world?

The iPhone is already a hit even without corporate deployment and support. Apple shipped more than a million units in its first full quarter on the market a quarterly milestone it took the iPod three years to achieve. No less impressive, the iPhone's been out for less than six months and is available only through AT&T, yet it already claims 27% of the U.S. smartphone market, second only to RIM. More recent European launches are taking off, and The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Steve Jobs has had talks with Japan's dominant mobile carrier, NTT DoCoMo, to bring the iPhone to that gadget-loving land.

At first glance it would seem that kind of momentum would all but assure the iPhone a place in the office, but there are a host of obstacles to overcome.

"There are a lot of enterprise users who are going out and buying iPhones," says Jack E. Gold, president of J. Gold Associates, a technology research and consulting firm. "But as far as being a true enterprise-ready device, meaning it's secure, it's manageable and I can plug it into my corporate systems, it's just not there yet."

Apart from the lack of a physical keyboard or replaceable battery, the iPhone for the time being, anyway has serious software and security limitations for enterprise use. The thing that's made the BlackBerry such a runaway corporate hit is the server support. BlackBerry Enterprise Server lets your email show up on your handheld before it hits your PC inbox. Meanwhile, integration with Microsoft Exchange lets users access and synchronize critical Outlook features like calendar, tasks and contacts. IAnywhere, a division of Sybase, plans to offer iPhone support for Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange enterprise email sometime in the first half of next year, but that's not in itself enough to make the iPhone a good corporate citizen with all the features and compatibility enjoyed by BlackBerry users.

"There are stated plans to support third-party applications but there is no third-party application support now," says Edward Eigerman, a principal at Eigerman Consulting, an IT deployment firm. "The question is, how is the software going to be delivered and who's going to control it? My expectation is that the only way to put software on an iPhone is through AT&T or Apple. Until that delivery mechanism is in place nothing is going to happen."

And then there's the very real concern over security. If a BlackBerry goes missing in the wild a company's network administrator can remotely wipe it clean. That's not the case with the iPhone. IT departments have worked long and hard to set up policies and systems governing the security risks presented by an increasingly mobile work force.

But even pushback from corporate IT departments doesn't mean the iPhone is DOA for enterprise use, says Charles Golvin, an analyst with technology researcher Forrester Research. After all, the migration to BlackBerrys or Palm's Treo didn't come from the top down.

"These devices gained traction because some rogue executive said, 'I don't care what IT said. This is going to be productive for me and I'm going to use it,'" says Golvin. "I think the iPhone is experiencing very similar impact, meaning there are people out there, executives and others, who want their iPhones and don't care what the guys in IT say. They're going to use it."

It'll take a while, but if the third-party software support is there meaning that an iPhone can rival a BlackBerry for email and other tasks IT departments will have a headache beating back the tide. If the CEO of the company wants to use an iPhone instead of a BlackBerry, is the IT department going to say no?

On the Mac side of Apple's business, the 15% to 20% of the enterprise market it enjoyed so many years ago is almost negligible now, and seemingly gone for good. That ship has sailed.

"I worked for Apple as an enterprise sales person trying to sell Macs," Eigerman says. "And potential customers would have this long laundry list of things that Macs couldn't do that their businesses were relying on." Financial firms, for example, are big IT spenders, but they need PCs to run their beloved Bloomberg terminals.

So the iPhone isn't going to be the Trojan horse that sneaks Macs back into the enterprise world. But it seems a safe bet that the smartphone will make an enterprise dent on its own terms. Apple feels confident it'll sell its 10 millionth iPhone next year. If IT departments and third-party developers come around, then we may look back on that number as being quaintly conservative.