AppleInsider | Snow Leopard Server to offer low cost, secure mobile access to iPhone

[T]he company is now positioning Snow Leopard Server as an alternative way to deliver remote access services to mobile devices with less overhead and equipment, and avoiding expensive Client Access Licenses charged by Microsoft. According to sources familiar with Apple's plans, Mobile Access uses a proxy server to provide remote mobile users with "always on" security they won't need to manually connect with when needed.
A proxy server can act as a network gateway that performs content filtering or caching services to accelerate web access to internal users on a private network. In Apple's case however, it appears that Mobile Access in Snow Leopard will be used as a reverse proxy to deliver SSL certificate-based secure encryption of both email and web-based services to iPhone and iPod touch users.
It is already common for mail servers to deliver SSL encryption of POP, IMAP and SMTP traffic, and for web services to supply SSL-encrypted web access via the HTTPS protocol. Because Apple's new Address Book Server, iCal Server, and Wiki collaboration tools are all WebDAV-based, it will be simple for Apple to offer an SSL proxy that centrally secures all the email, calendar, contacts, a collaboration server access for iPhone users, making it simpler, faster, and cheaper for companies to deploy mobile remote access without configuring or supporting VPN connections

Is this a grab at the enterprise market? Doesn’t feel like it. After all, how many large organizations are going to provision calendaring, collaboration, and mail using Apple versions of open source, standards-based tools? The domain of Exchange, SharePoint, or Notes doesn’t seem to be the bullseye here so much as the smaller organization looking to provision some level of services, while enabling a mobile workforce.

I have to wonder, though, if that market isn’t going to think first about hosted services to address their needs, as opposed to buying, deploying, maintaining, and upgrading their own boxes?

AppleInsider | Snow Leopard Server to offer low cost, secure mobile access to iPhone