iPhone

Good iPhone, Enterprise Ready

The only thing I can think of that I would change about the iPhone is to have the ability to add a layer of full disk encryption. In lieu of that, Good, the makers of GoodLink, have reinvented themselves as the iPhone in the Enterprise front runner in my book. They did this by duplicating much of the functionality of the native iPhone applications, but did so in a manner that stores its data in an encrypted disk image. Communications to the iPhone from the Good servers are also encrypted with similar fervor. And if you have Domino instead of Exchange then you have equal functionality, great for a number of environments!

So what does Good get you? Well, much of what you get without Good. You have email, synchronized mail, push notification (although the push from Good actually works with mail, calendars and contacts). You also get calendars and contacts. But you had that before; now it’s just sitting on an encrypted disk image and can easily be wiped; or in the event that the device cannot be accessed over the air, it will be sitting on an AES-192 encrypted disk image.

What else does Good get you? A centralized management dashboard (that is web based), more granular policies and reporting. The tunnel, as we mentioned, is encrypted, but it also requires no incoming ports, attractive for many environments with concerns about ActiveSync security, etc.

Overall, I’ve only had a few hours at using Good for Enterprise, and I already feel like an old pro at it. It’s simpler than Blackberry Enterprise to manage, but also lacks some of the extensibility. It’s more expensive than just leveraging ActiveSync, but then also lacks some of the security concerns that many have there. A great product to check out, but make sure that your end users will be OK using the Good client as it is a little different from the native clients built into the iPhone!