The rampant popularity of the iPhone is cause for IT consternation across corporate America right now. The all-in-one Apple device, originally designed purely for consumer use, has taken a big bite out of Research In Motion's BlackBerry pie. Apple now has at least a 28 percent slice of the smart phone market.

But iPhone is not built with the same security in place as rival phones. That's caused many companies to ban the iPhone from workplaces because the data cannot be guaranteed to be secure.

Yet the landscape is changing. Once the realm of designers and musicians, it now seems corporate America is changing its tune, albeit reluctantly. The shift toward Apple products inside companies is causing them to reconsider how to deal with the change. Many sales and marketing people prefer the slick iPhone, even Red Herrring's CEO and publisher uses an iMac (don't tell anyone). Sybase recently released an iPhone-friendly application to allow its employees to forward email to their iPhones.

Many Businesses are adopting a different strategy. SAP says it is developing customer management applications for the iPhone to be more business-friendly. Even IBM is developing a version of Lotus email that will be compatible. Salesforce.com and Sun Microsystems are two other companies that are custom designing customized apps.

Apple is also responding to fit the business needs of its customers, saying that it will release new iPhone software in June that will let IT guys access and utilize Microsoft's email, calendar, and contact management software that gives access to corporate networks.

AT&T, Apple's iPhone partner, is trying to make the device more flexible by allowing iPhone purchases by corporate account holders. Rather than just billing the idividual, adding to their monthly expense sheet, now billing can go direct to the company.

No matter how hard corporate IT might try to resist the integration of Apple's OS beyond the desktop publishing department, as more cool Apple products begin filtering into the workplace, the tide is going to be too strong to resist, so listen up propeller heads, you had better get used to the idea and deal with it.