With the iPhone's newly announced enterprise features generating considerable buzz, some analysts have softened their skepticism about its potential as a corporate device, but not nearly enough to recommend it over Research in Motion's BlackBerry.

The features were unwrapped during a media conference at Apple's San Francisco headquarters last week, where the company announced that iPhone users would soon have access to Microsoft's Exchange ActiveSync, a licensed data synchronization protocol whose built-in support will give IT departments the ability to set password policies, set up VPN settings and perform remote data wipes on iPhones that have been lost or stolen. Apple also said that the iPhone would soon have access to Cisco IPsec VPN, which the company says will "ensure the highest level of IP-based encryption available for transmission of sensitive corporate data." Finally, Apple said it would let iPhone users make VoIP calls over Wi-Fi connections, a move that could potentially be a money-saver for companies by reducing the number of cellular minutes used per month.

The new features were seemingly developed in response to some analysts who had warned IT departments to not allow the iPhone to connect to their networks because it had no way to deliver secure corporate e-mail or to encrypt data sent and received through the device. Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of marketing, acknowledged these concerns last week and said the new features were a reflection of what Apple customers have told the company would make the device enterprise-worthy.

Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney, who had initially advised IT departments against allowing the iPhone onto their networks, says Gartner will be releasing a report on the iPhone's enterprise potential in the near future and it appears to have met the research firm's minimal requirements to qualify for enterprise support. While Dulaney emphasizes that no formal conclusions have yet been made, he says the iPhone's new device-wipe ability, as well as its ability to enforce the use of complex passwords, will help it meet basic corporate security standards.

But while these features represent a definite step forward in expanding the iPhone's reach beyond the consumer market, Dulaney says it still has a long way to go before it's in the same class as the BlackBerry, which is currently the standard for mobile enterprise devices. He says the BlackBerry has a larger array of security policies, such as the ability for IT departments to disable the its digital cameras; to enable or shut down specific Bluetooth profiles and set how long the device is "discoverable" using Bluetooth; and to define which applications on a BlackBerry can access GPS capabilities. For companies that don't have overly stringent security requirements, the iPhone may be fine, Dulaney says. But for professionals who require high levels of security, such as government employees or stock traders, he says that the BlackBerry is still the best choice.

Andrew Storms, director of security operations at the San Francisco-based software vendor nCircle, also thinks the iPhone has a long way to go before matching the BlackBerry. In particular, he thinks one of BlackBerry's big assets is that it routes all of its data through an intermediary server at RIM's network operations center (NOC) in Canada, whereas the iPhone's Microsoft ActiveSync approach is a direct push technology that requires no intermediary servers.

These two methods of sending data became a point of contention during last week's iPhone press event, when Apple CEO Steve Jobs touted the iPhone's direct push approach by implying that BlackBerry users' e-mail messages could be vulnerable to hackers while being routed through RIM's NOC. But Storms believes Jobs' assessment of BlackBerry's security infrastructure misses that mark. Instead of seeing the NOC approach as a burden, Storms writes, BlackBerry enterprise managers see the Blackberry Enterprise server -- the software that sits on the corporate network, receives e-mails from the company's Exchange or Lotus