One of the really cool features of the iPhone that not many people talk about is its ability to call any web-based service to retrieve information in real-time. The Apple Development Toolkit allows developers to get data from sources such as an RSS feed to more complex systems like web services or even scraping data off of a web page. You can even pull data from multiple sources at the same time and then combine this information into some really interesting customized views.
 
For example, with a custom iPhone application, you can collect data from your back office databases from anywhere on the Internet. Then your application can format this data into custom reports (even add charts and graphs) that can be viewed directly on the iPhone. In many cases, your back office systems already have these data sources available so it is pretty trivial to set up an iPhone application to get the data and then it is just a matter of displaying it in the ways that are most convenient for you to read. You can even export this data as a PDF or email to a colleague from your phone.
 
If you are worried about security (which you should be), it’s good to know that the iPhone already supports SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and other types of encryption and lots of authentication methods. So you can make sure no one can get access to your data without authorization and no one can snoop what you are transferring over the Internet.
 
If you’re interested in building an application to view your data on the go, contact us and we’ll give you an estimate to get started.