iAnywhere to bring Lotus Notes push e-mail to iPhone

iAnywhere has developed a way to allow users of Lotus Notes to check their email without having to wait for the iPhone SDK.

While the company did receive some guidance from Apple to ensure that its development was going in the right direction, iAnywhere's system uses the device's mail client. Contacts are accessible through the web browser.

From iAnywhere's statements, it also appears that enterprises can use its system for Exchange e-mail. Officials explained that ActiveSync has limitations, and opens up Active Directory in a way some may perceive as a security risk.

Corporations who may find ActiveSync unacceptable for their iPhone deployments could use its option instead.

The systems works through an application that sits inside the companies firewall. Mobile connections would be ported to this application so that the rest of the mail system is unaffected. IT departments would also have the option to restrict attachments.

"We've had significant demand from our customer base for iPhone support, as companies want to allow the iPhone as an approved device choice for wireless email," Sybase vice president Mark Willnerd said.

He added that the company is currently looking into how it could leverage the iPhone SDK in order to further expand the functionality of the product. This probably means that calendar syncing and device management functionality is not far off.

Sybase expects to make the functionality available to customers by the end of this month.