As a Zimbra hosting provider, I often get questions from clients about iPhones. One of the glaring omissions in the iPhone is the lack of any sort of over-the-air syncing capability. I completely understand the need to plug it in to iTunes so it can check for software updates, sync lots of large media files fast, etc. The truth is, though, that calendars and contact, something business people live by, aren’t very big and are easily synced over the air.

A number of blogs, such as this one, have pointed out the fact that .Mac is a natural addition to the iPhone. My thoughts are almost identical to the ones in this post in particular. Putting .Mac on the iPhone allows users to sync their calendars and contacts in real time with their .Mac account, something I would absolutely have to have as a business owner, and part of the reason I do not have an iPhone. Doing this, though, as the poster points out, actually has the potential to create a second halo effect for the Mac itself. Since users could then sync their contacts and calendars with their Macs, the iPhone push would translate readily to a Mac push. Not only that, I GUARANTEE that it would make sales of .Mac accounts skyrocket. Only with the recent updates to .Mac for Leopard have I actually taken a look at .Mac and noted that it wouldn’t be a complete waste of money. With this though, it might become a must have for some users. My wife does have an iPhone, and if this were available, I’d probably purchase a .Mac account for her.

The one final piece that would make this a real contender in the business world is the .Mac iPhone server. Blackberry already makes the Blackberry Buiness Server for keeping your company’s Blackberry crowd in sync with your corporate collaboration system, why not for the iPhone? An on-site iPhone server would allow direct syncing of your employees’ calendars and contacts with their iPhone without having to be tethered to their machines. In addition, for companies like me that do hosted collaboration, being able to plug those iPhones directly into the collaboration suite would be a big win, whether it was with a server I hosted myself or via a contract for .Mac services.

So, Apple, if you’re listening, where is it? Seems like a no-brainer to me.