As expected, Apple's announcement today regarding enterprise options in the new iPhone SDK was a doozy: the company has unveiled the long-rumored support for Exchange ActiveSync, the absence of which had been one of the largest obstacles to effective iPhone use in the average Exchange-based enterprise (in other words, most enterprises).

The SDK was also released in beta, but the built-in business-ready features are the real news. The Exchange integration sounds pretty deep on the face of it, with support for "...secure over-the-air push email, contacts, calendars and global address lists" according to the Apple press release. Remote wipe, password policy enforcement, and automatic discovery are also included, promsing to make the iPhone mail experience pretty much on par with that of Windows Mobile.

Apple also announced the integration of Cisco IPSEC VPN technology, and support for WPA2 Enterprise wireless encryption into the iPhone platform.

Taken together, these updates represent a significant increase in the ease of integrating off-the-shelf iPhones with the average corporate infrastructure today, and woe be it to the CIO who isn't already framing a response to staff and executives who have thus far been put off by "It doesn't support Exchange, we can't support it, sorry."