You won't hear much talk about corporate IT at Apple's MacWorld Conference this week, but the maker of the iPhone and the Mac is nonetheless making steady progress in the enterprise technology world.

More companies are bringing Macs within their networks and increasing support for the iPhone, recent surveys show. Macs are generally pricier than Windows PCs but an increasing number of companies are letting employees choose their own desktops and many of them are choosing Macs, says Pund-IT analyst Charles King.

"We're seeing an increasing number of companies that are allowing their employees much broader latitude in the computers they use for business," King says. "Personally, I'm seeing more and more Macs on the road when I travel."

Several surveys back up King's statement. In one report Forrester Research chided Apple for not having an enterprise strategy, but said Mac usage among Forrester clients has still quadrupled since October 2006, moving from 1.1 percent to 4.5 percent of desktops.

"Apple's singular focus on user experience has resulted in some success in the enterprise — without even trying to break into the market," Forrester analyst Benjamin Gray writes. Gray says the success of the iPhone is driving desktop operations professionals to seek better end-to-end experiences with the Mac, and younger, tech-savvy workers are choosing Macs because they feel the Apple computers enhance productivity.

While Macs represent fewer than one in 20 corporate desktops, more than two-thirds of companies responding to a survey by ITIC analyst Laura DiDio say they are likely to let users deploy Macs within the next year. Nearly one-quarter of the 700 survey participants had at least 50 Macintoshes in their organizations, DiDio writes.

Moreover, 50 percent of ITIC survey respondents plan to increase integration with Apple consumer products such as the iPhone to give users access to corporate e-mail and other applications, DiDio writes.

When the iPhone first appeared, analysts at Gartner warned enterprises that the device lacked crucial security features and support for widely used e-mail systems such as Microsoft Exchange.

King says he's not convinced the iPhone offers productivity benefits over the BlackBerry, but says concerns about merging the iPhone with existing e-mail systems seem to have disappeared.