iPhone to gain Exchange support, does it matter?

Note: I have posted a followup to this post here.

Over at Apple Insider there is an article stating that Apple is going to announce better Microsoft Exchange support on the iPhone next week. It has been 8 months since the launch of the iPhone and sales have slowed since then and most IT departments that have chosen to or been forced into supporting the iPhone have figured out how to get it working with their Exchange server and syncing with Outlook or Entourage. So does it matter that they are releasing this now?

Are all of those IT departments that just spent all of this time changing network settings and desktop security settings to allow this device to work properly with their systems going to now go back and reconfigure all of these now stable devices? Chances are in the short-term, no they will not. They will probably catch this one on the next wave when Apple releases the second (hopefully 3G) version of the iPhone and there is a rush of new iPhones to be supported. Unless Apple does what they should have done all along, pay Microsoft to license ActiveSync, which would make setting up and supporting these devices a no brainer.

There is always the possibility that this is simply a rumor and is not going to happen next week, and this argument is just and exercise in futility. We will just have to wait and see.