Following on from my earlier blog "Securing and Delivering Business Data on the iPhone" , today Sybase shipped a new version of iAnywhere Mobile Office for Windows Mobile, Symbian and iPhone users in the enterprise.

The new release offers enhanced administrative, network security, deployment features and allows the extension of enterprise-class email and PIM data from Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange mobile devices. In turn this will allow the reduction of the total cost of ownership when extending email and business processes.

In particular this is major news for the iPhone's ability to be adopted by businesses, as iAnywhere Mobile Office provides a unique approach for security with an enterprise application sandbox model for email, calendar and tasks along with on-device and over-the-air encryption as well as application password protection. It also allows users to synchronize contacts and perform a corporate directory lookup to find colleagues.

Currently for iPhone users, all data in the native iPhone inbox, calendar, and contacts applications is unprotected and stored in clear text. Furthermore the iPhone does not have a concept of tasks, that most of us rely upon day-to-day, so the creation of that within iAnywhere Mobile Office will be a great benefit. Of the other two solutions that are available, Microsoft Exchange relies on the unprotected native applications on the iPhone, as do other public email services and IBM Lotus Notes users have no native iPhone solution, but a browser-based solution, that does not allow the interaction with PIM and email, if connectivity is lost.

So I can safely say that Sybase knows how to make the iPhone enterprise-ready!

The iAnywhere Mobile Office iPhone client can be found on the Apple iTunes App Store from today here or search on the keywords “Sybase iAnywhere" and if you want to learn more there is an iAnywhere Mobile Office – iPhone Webcast on March 26th, 11 a.m. Eastern. You can register here.

You can also check out a Q&A with Senthil Krishnapillai of Sybase iAnywhere

NOTE: The Mobile Office Client requires use of iAnywhere Mobile Office Server and a client access license to connect with email systems.