Boom! Apple has finally unveiled the official SDK and looks like Apple has a winner at its hands in the form of the iPhone.  The Apple Special Event just wrapped up a few hours ago, and surprisingly Apple had quite a bit to say. The first half of the event was concentrated upon enterprise users while the second half focused on the SDK and a few other things. With complete enterprise support coming, Apple surely has a winner at its hands. Here’s a rundown into what enterprise features the iPhone is going to support soon :

• Push email
• Push calendar
• Push contacts
• Global address list
• Cisco IPsec VPN
• Certificates and Identities
• WPA2 / 802.1x
• Enforced security policies
• Device configuration
• Remote wipe

The enterprise announcement was pretty much expected after Apple had sent out the invites for the special event. But guess what Microsoft also had a few good things to say about the iPhone. Here is what MS said  “after the iPhone launched, it quickly became one of the best selling phones on the market.”. It feels nice to hear such things from the Microsoft camp isn’t it?

The SDK

Well Apple has given us the same SDK that Apple developer themselves use to create the applications. Which means we can access just about any feature on the iPhone be it the contacts, accelerometer etc.. Here is what the developers need to know about the SDK

• The SDK is available for free starting today.
• You will have to register as a developer by paying a one time $99 fee.
• If you plan on charging for the program Apple will keep 30% of the revenue.
• You don’t have to pay anything for hosting or credit card processing.
• If you are charging for your apps Apple will pay you on a monthly basis.
• They have a $100 million iFund to help developers.
• No pornographic of malicious applications are allowed. (Obviously)

What We Need to Know

• Can install apps using either iTunes or the AppStore.
• Installed Applications are updated over the air when the developer updates it.
• Applications that are offered for free will cost nothing.
• The AppStore works in a similar fashion to the mobile iTunes store, so we will need a store account to download and install the Apps.

Sweet! When can I get this

• Apple doesn’t quite really have the 2.0 Software ready as yet. At the moment they are looking for enterprise users to beta test it. If you are an enterprise user you can apply for the iPhone Enterprise Beta Program.
• The SDK is available from today at the Apple Developer site.
• The iPhone 2.0 firmware will be available to the general public in late june sometime around the first anniversary of the iPhone
• And yeah the 2.0 firmware will not be a free upgrade for the iPod Touch users

I’m pretty sure that the announcements today are pretty exciting and will keep the shareholders happy. Also I’m pretty sure that Apple will beat its own target of selling 10Million iPhones by the end of this year by a comfortable margin. What do you guys have to say about the SDK?

While I agree that Google Apps has its own shortcomings, but I see no reason Google Apps can’t have a mass adoption by the enterprise sector. Here are some reasons why Google Apps is the right choice for most Enterprise Users.

• 1. Eliminate email hassles instantly. No more outages, lost mail, spamming, phishing, viruses, security breaches.
• 2. Reduce costs. Eliminate the hardware, software, maintenance, upgrades, and services associated with your current environment.
• 3. Enable collaboration for everyone, from anywhere. Access and collaborate on all your documents and spreadsheets from anywhere in the world via a web browser.
• 4. Get everyone on the same page. Bring all your key information together in one central, easy-to-use, searchable location.
• 5. Reduce IT overload. Google handles all technical aspects, freeing up your team to focus on other projects, and allowing you to reduce your online communication and collaboration costs to one low monthly fee.
• 6. Instantly increase the productivity, knowledge, teamwork, and communication capabilities. Provide instantly accessible tools, including Web-based business class email, online document management, online calendars, blogs, wikis, etc. to your business and your team.
• 7. Make partnering and out-sourcing more efficient. Create a platform that can seamlessly support virtual ad-hoc teams (without the intervention of an “administrator”), thereby quickly reducing your costs.
• 8. Increase your peace of mind. With Google’s hosted, fast, safe, and secure file storage, you never have to worry about losing critical business information. You also never have to worry about scalability – Google apps will support any number of users who can be added at any time.
• 9. Get automatic versioning. Any change to any information in a Google document or spreadsheet creates a new version of the information. Even if a document or spreadsheet is being authored by many users simultaneously, none of the information will ever get lost. If any change is unacceptable, the contents of it can be quickly rolled back to any of its previous states with a couple of clicks.
• 10. Take advantage of continuous improvement. All Google Apps updates are immediately distributed to all customers. This means that you always have the latest and greatest features immediately available for use in your organization – without doing a thing.
• 11. New hires are already using this technology. People entering the workforce today have lived and breathed the web since they were in high school. If you don’t provide company endorsed solutions, they will end up using tools that are available on the open Internet until you do.

So afterall every Office Suite, be it Office or Zimbra or even Google Apps, they have there own pros and cons. But in the end I feel that Google Apps is the best option for startups to store and manage information.