Tech at work says new iPhone STILL won't work on our servers... is he lying??

[Learjet035]

My buddy wants to get an iPhone but his company runs blackberries through MS exchange.

Well now that 2.0 came out he figured he could now finally get the phone.
He went to his tech guy and he said... throw your phone in the water cause it won't work. Period.

Is he full of it, lazy, or telling the truth???
Anyone know?

 

[vertigomhs]

My buddy wants to get an iPhone but his company runs blackberries through MS exchange.

Well now that 2.0 came out he figured he could now finally get the phone.
He went to his tech guy and he said... throw your phone in the water cause it won't work. Period.

Is he full of it, lazy, or telling the truth???
Anyone know?

well the iphone 2.0 software is compatible with exchange, im sure it will work, unless they are running a very old version of it (is there older versions of exhange?). i say the IT guy is full of it, like many others.

though the phone will work with exchange it has less features in terms of email and other business things.

 

[SolRayz]

Here at my work I'm dealing with a similar situation. I emailed IT and the response I got was "We will notify users when we have that service implemented"

What does that mean exactly?

 

[pintnight]

My buddy wants to get an iPhone but his company runs blackberries through MS exchange.

Well now that 2.0 came out he figured he could now finally get the phone.
He went to his tech guy and he said... throw your phone in the water cause it won't work. Period.

Is he full of it, lazy, or telling the truth???
Anyone know?

The IT guy is the truth (somewhat). IT doesn't want to support iPhone on their exchange server.

Here at my work I'm dealing with a similar situation. I emailed IT and the response I got was "We will notify users when we have that service implemented"

What does that mean exactly?

IT doesn't want to support iPhone on their exchange server.

 

[macdaddy121]

Works here....

 

[Queso]

Here at my work I'm dealing with a similar situation. I emailed IT and the response I got was "We will notify users when we have that service implemented"

What does that mean exactly?

I would say that since they are responsible for maintaining a production business e-mail environment that is most likely critical to the day-to-day running of the company's money-making ability they want to fully test iPhones with it before simply allowing access to everyone and possibly causing outages.

Any IT department that deployed Entourage usage with Exchange 2003 too soon will testify exactly why that's a decent strategy.

 

[japeurotrash]

IT departments tend to be PC centric..... and lazy!

 

[clayj]

FWIW, Blackberry/BES and Windows Mobile/iPhone/ActiveSync are totally different technologies. It is not at all unreasonable that an organization that has settled on one platform may be reticent to enable use of the other platform. Not only are there risks involved in enabling any previously unused technology, but you also have to consider this from a support standpoint. They may be perfectly comfortable supporting Blackberry, but not at all familiar with ActiveSync, or vice versa. But if it's their job, then they have to be prepared. Better not to turn it on at all than to turn it on and not know how to fix problems.

So on behalf of all IT people out there, cut them some slack, will ya? It may even be that they want to enable ActiveSync but have been told not to by the higher-ups.

 

[Nuc]

IT departments tend to be PC centric..... and lazy!

Lazy being the keyword. Also I found that they usually know squat about their jobs...

Nuc

 

[JPIndustrie]

Yeah. I'm the IT guy for my company as well.

Activesync is usually setup whenever a company uses an exchange server. BES's are used in conjunction with their exchange to create one solution. Activesync creates another email solution.

The fact of the matter is, if you see people in your company running around with HTC tilts, Moto Q's, or any other Windows mobile device, your company's email solution includes activesync, which means your iPhone w/ 2.0 WILL work.

If you need the credentials, tell your IT dep't you got a moto Q, and need instructions on how to setup on that. Then just plug in the values into the iPhone, and voila.

 

[FearlessFreep]

IT guy here. Does your company offer Outlook Web Access externally? That is, can you sign on to any internet connection and access your email through OWA? If so ,chances are pretty good that ActiveSync is already in place and enabled. The default settings on Exchange installations are to enable ActiveSync and by default all new accounts are enabled. Many IT shops simply set up Exchange and don't even bother changing the default with ActiveSync. Both AS and OWA usually use the same front-end connection.

 

[woodekm]

Where is Nick Burns when you need him?

M O V E ! ! !

 

[Queso]

IT departments tend to be PC centric..... and lazy!

I'll remember that next time I'm attempting to juggle 20 things at once and jumping through hoops to obtain budget for replacing some "critical" piece of infrastructure that became obsolete in 1996

 

[dwright1974]

IT guy here. Does your company offer Outlook Web Access externally? That is, can you sign on to any internet connection and access your email through OWA? If so ,chances are pretty good that ActiveSync is already in place and enabled. The default settings on Exchange installations are to enable ActiveSync and by default all new accounts are enabled. Many IT shops simply set up Exchange and don't even bother changing the default with ActiveSync. Both AS and OWA usually use the same front-end connection.

I'll second this! For Exchange/iPhone to work all that is needed is

- Email address
- URL to Outlook Web Access
- Username (This will have to be entered as domain\username)
- Use SSL turned ON if OWA is through https://myOWA-URL.com

Got mine working, only problem is I find myself checking work email at 9 o'clock at night and on a Saturday

HTH

- D

 

[DoFoT9]

i reckon he's full of it the lazy coock.

 

[laprej]

My friend is the Blackberry admin at his company. He says they (currently) don't support iPhones because they don't want to have to open up the servers to attacks by allowing external machine to access internal servers. Blackberry e-mail is routed through Blackberry's servers.