ReadWriteEnterprise

Content stored on an iPhone 3GS with passcode protection can be accessed without the passcode simply by attaching the device to a computer running the latest version of Ubuntu or a Windows or OSX system running off the shelf software such as iPhone Explorer. This flaw was discovered by Bernd Marienfeld, an information security professional and blogger, last week. Recently, the enterprise has seen a steep increase in the adoption of the iPhone and iPad. But Apple will need to aggressively address security concerns such as these in order to gain and hold market share.

Washington, D.C. CTO Bryan Sivak is creating the infrastructure for a city that makes everyone a map maker in the cloud. His plan? Give citizens easy tools to create their own mapping applications that can be augmented with additional data.

Sivak spoke at the Gov 2.0 conference this past week where he outlined projects now underway in the city.

According to Information Week, these include his plans to create a private cloud that acts as a shopping experience for the IT manager. After adding a server to an online shopping cart, the order is completed and a server automatically spools up into the private cloud.

The idea is pretty much dead that the iPhone is just for your personal life. But to see that 40 percent of iPhone sales are for the enterprise is a bit of shocker.

But according to Larry Dignan of ZDNet, that's just what an AT&T executive said at a conference this week.

Ron Spears, CEO of AT&T's Business Solutions, said 4 of 10 iPhones are sold for business use. He also said increasingly the enterprise views the iPhone as a mobile computer that can even serve to replace a laptop.

A natural curiosity surfaces when a company from a different era starts using API's and leveraging the cloud. It shows how fast the world is changing as Web oriented architectures become more predominant.

Mastercard, Blockbuster and Pitney Bowes are all companies we've reported about in the past few weeks that are reinventing themselves to some degree by adopting API infrastructures and developing services and platforms.

This month we're quietly re-launching our ReadWriteEnterprise channel, with a new sponsor: Intel and Microsoft. We've hired Alex Williams full-time, to manage both of our enterprise-focused channels: ReadWriteEnterprise and ReadWriteCloud. We will also be introducing a new daily writer to ReadWriteEnterprise shortly.

I'd like to formally welcome Alex to his new role. He has been doing a lot of traveling in recent times for us, attending enterprise and cloud events. He will continue to be out and about in his new role. Indeed this week Alex is at the cloud computing focused Gluecon in Denver, where he'll be moderating a session entitled "Managing Complexity in the Cloud." You'll also be able to catch up with him at the Enterprise 2.0 event in Boston in June.

Google Wave has graduated to Google Apps, showing a resurgence in user interest that seemed unlikely just a few months ago.

It took a lot of criticism over the past year, following its launch at Google I/O in 2009. Its blank white page was confusing and people were unsure how to use it - it almost left too much to the imagination. But to Google's credit, Wave has come a long way, particularly with its UI.

The advent of geodata and its use in the enterprise is evident in the advancements we're seeing in the cloud computing space.

This past week ArcGIS Beta launched. It's an online mapping service that provides tools for making maps. You can share maps or build maps with other community members. It's an example of how geodata is being used to create a new generation of data services that have multiple uses in the enterprise.

IBM is buying Sterling Commerce for $1.4 billion. It is IBM's largest acquisition since purchasing Cognos in 2007 for $922 million.

The acquisition of the AT&T company is intended to complement IBM's middleware portfolio and help customers develop more intelligent business networks. Gartner believes the acquisition is a complement to IBM's acquisition of Cast Iron Systems a few weeks ago.

The transaction environment is undergoing rapid change as customers increasingly make purchases online and through electronic systems via any number of indirect channels. IBM's expectation is that Sterling Commerce will simplify the way organizations connect and communicate with partners, customers and suppliers through an on-premise infrastructure or cloud delivery model.

Last night in Portland, Oregon, the National Center for Women in Information Technology presented Kim Polese with the NCWIT Symons Innovator Award. The award is given annually to an outstanding woman who has successfully built and funded an IT company, in honor of the late Jeannette Symons, founder of Industrious Kid, Zhone Technologies, and Ascend Communications.

Listed in 1997 as one of Time Magazine's "25 Most Influential Americans," Polese has had a long career in Silicon Valley as the CEO of SpikeSource, the co-founder of Marimba, and the original product manager of Java at Sun Microsystems.

The proliferation of apps is creating a bit of a challenge for the enterprise that does significant software development.

But it is also in many ways what is propelling a new generation of SaaS services that add features at an exponential rate compared to on-premise counterparts.