Make iPhone the company workhorse

Get to work, iPhone. As far as HyperOffice president Farzin Arsanjani is concerned, you've spent too much time avoiding real work.

If he has his way, your days loafing around in back pockets while the other mobile devices pull their weight are over. That's why HyperOffice (review) recently announced a plan to make its suite of online collaboration tools even better on the iPhone (trial beta).

While the productivity application for rapid-growth companies has already been accessible from mobile browsers, certain functions are limited within a constrained user interface. The iPhone, with its large screen and Safari browser, makes the full Web suite available to HyperOffice account holders, especially now that some back-end iPhone optimization work on HyperOffice's side is complete.

What's the biggie? A significant part of the company's value proposition rests on giving telecommuting employees, clients, and contractors access to Microsoft Office and Microsoft Exchange Server accounts through its software, and from any device with a browser. It's Arsanjani's hopes that HyperOffice is able to bridge the gap that keeps employees from using the popular iPhone as a business device, and what keeps small companies from choosing it.

Arsanjani goes on to lay out a road map for future iterations that might make HyperOffice a more valuable iPhone tool. The next version, expected to arrive a few months after Apple releases its iPhone SDK, will improve the Web application's interface and navigation. That's good since visiting a HyperOffice account from the iPhone requires some pretty intense zooming.

Native support for iCal is planned for the Web app's final version, Arsanjani says, and will sync with the Apple software to store data directly on the iPhone. Companies' account administrators will have sole discretion over whether storing data on the iPhone is allowed.