The arrival of Windows Phone 7 devices in the U.S. means consumers have even more choices to consider when they compare smart phones – whether they want them for business use or personal use or both. After a disappointing experience with the unsuccessful Kin family of phones, it’s exciting to see that Microsoft has built a compelling next-generation mobility platform. As a result, the first wave of Windows Phone devices offers consumers a new type of smartphone experience.

It also means that enterprise IT will need to prepare to manage and support a new mobile platform because several aspects of WP7 are critical to enterprise mobility. For instance, the platform provides device management capability that allows smart phones to comply with corporate policies. Version 1 is not perfect (there’s no encryption, for example), but it does provide for a basic ActiveSync compliant device. By allowing users to transition easily between their work and personal lives, Windows Phone 7 will enable employees to carry one device around the clock. In addition, by making it easy to develop cloud-based enterprise-specific apps for this platform, Microsoft has taken steps to appeal to consumers who have grown accustomed to having a wide array of smartphone apps to choose from. Based on these and other characteristics, I believe Windows Phone 7 will make it onto many approved lists very quickly.

The advancements that Windows Phone 7 brings to the smartphone market will further spur innovation in a market that shows no signs of standing still and make the ever-evolving and increasingly diverse mobility market even more interesting. Really.

We all know the importance of having access to information right at our fingertips. It’s become second nature to grab your phone to access email or search for that song you can’t think of to save your life. The ability to get answers quickly and accurately makes our personal lives easier. In the business world, it can make a huge difference – helping companies gain and maintain competitive advantage.

One industry that is reaping mobility’s benefits is retail. Instead of printing and lugging around paperwork, retail and merchandising employees can use mobile devices to collect valuable data and easily feed it to centralized databases. Managers can then access the most up-to-date information to monitor store performance and streamline the reporting process. Just as consumers use their phones to get things done, mobile technologies allow retailers to boost productivity and get more out of their workforce.

Why then aren’t all retailers making a mad dash for mobility? Learn more about the obstacles to adoption retail faces and how those obstacles can be overcome in this article in Chain Store Age magazine by Mike Anderson, Enterprise Mobile VP, Operations.

Increasingly, companies are deciding that an Individual Liable approach to mobile devices makes sense and that appears to be a trend that’s here to stay. Compelling, exciting choices in platforms and devices drive companies to allow the use of employee-owned mobile devices on the job.  Today, more and more people are using the same device for business and personal activities.

As employees gain greater freedom in their choice of mobile devices for business use, they experience a range of benefits, while IT faces some real challenges. The situation is a combination of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

The Good is that the broad range of smart phones and the innovation they provide are truly empowering users. Platforms are increasingly enterprise-aware, providing ways to meet corporate security and manageability standards. Yet these same choices lead to a lack of standardization, which is the Bad. And it all leads to the Ugly – what happens when choice gets ahead of the company’s ability to handle it.  What results is a mess.

To learn more about how to deal with the Ugly and embrace the diversity among mobile platforms and devices, check out this article I recently wrote for Mobile Enterprise magazine.

The iPad has indeed arrived. You can’t head to a news site or check out the latest on the tech blogs without seeing a mention of Apple’s newest device. You know what I’m talking about – with its debut recently, the iPad has seemingly taken on a life of its own. From reviews in publications like The Economist to an article on application development in the New York Times, the media and the public alike are abuzz with its possibilities.

Before too long, some of the early users, who are now just getting comfortable with the device, will find ways to use it to perform job-related tasks. After the iPad 3G comes out, users and application developers will already have begun turning iPad into a serious enterprise device.

I expect that enterprise users will embrace the iPad for many of the same reasons they took to the iPhone (attractive design, ease of use and range of applications). Its form factor makes it suitable for tasks for which a laptop would be unwieldy, but a phone interface would be limiting. The iPad will especially appeal to mobile workers who need to access information and complete relatively simple data entry on the go. Salespeople will likely be early adopters since the lightweight device will be easy to carry on road trips and will provide a flexible platform for presenting product demos, photos and other graphical information. The iPad should also be put to good use in the medical field, providing doctors and other health care staff access to patient records and other information on an easy-to-carry device.

My advice to IT is this: apply the lessons learned from the iPhone and plan for iPad deployments. Anticipate how your end users might employ the device. Then consider what types of controls you’ll want to put in place to manage it effectively. In other words, treat the iPad like a smartphone or a laptop. It promises productivity benefits but will undoubtedly challenge your staff. They are not going to have a lot of time to come up to speed before end users start connecting the iPad to your network.

We’ve been hearing from more and more companies that lack Apple expertise but need to deploy iPhones to considerable numbers of users. In recent engagements we’ve applied our mobility tools and best practices to get fully loaded iPhones into the hands of our customers’ corporate users. By adapting our iPhone mobility services to the iPad, we’ll be ready when the iPad comes into the enterprise, whether it’s supplied by IT or brought in by enthusiastic users.

As you may have heard, today Enterprise Mobile announced  the availability of a Hosted Device Management solution for iPhone and other mobile platforms. It is powered by technology from MobileIron, a partner that we have been working with very closely for a while now. I am personally excited about this for several reasons:

• Hosted DM is faster to implement – no design reviews, no security committees for our customers to deal with.
• It can be scaled up and down very quickly – if you are hiring 1333 merchandisers for a holiday season, no problem – you only get charged for the 2 months they are employed.
• No ramp up for a company’s IT staff is required.
• Coupled with our other services, it enables a full mobile deployment instantly.

I could go on to say why this is sexy. I could call it cloud computing, SaaS, the ASP model, hosting, outsourcing or any of the other labels that trendy now. The descriptors aren’t as important as the capabilities that hosted device management provides. Of course, we all know that beyond the benefits I mentioned there are challenges with a hosted model that should be considered. User/authentication can be more complex as the identity of users either has to be replicated or re-created with the hosting provider, and some services may be limited in terms of integrating into an existing on-premise infrastructure.

However, I do believe that when you combine our services and capabilities you get more benefits than pitfalls with the hosted model. Of course, if you don’t share that view, you can take advantage of the installation and services on premise. That way you can enjoy looking at the silver appliance in your data center and Enterprise Mobile takes care of all the support, ongoing management, provisioning or even end user support for you. Give us a call…

I just came across an interesting marketing gimmick – www.bargaincell.com have extended some of their deals till January 15th 2010 !

However there is a catch – you have to place the orders on Thursdays and Fridays only in addition to using the THRFRIDAY coupon.

So in order to get the 15% off:

1) Go to www.bargaincell.com Thu or Fri ONLY

2) During checkout use THRFRIDAY coupon

3) Save 15% on your new Motorola Droid or iPhone or even Windows Mobile Accessories

Many Windows Mobile users are waiting eagerly for the release of updates to the 6.5 version. Unfortunately for most US based users it means waiting on their mobile operator (T-M for HTC Touch PRO2, Sprint for HTC Snap, etc.) to release the updates. It is not clear when and how are going to be released yet as mobile operators usually don’t share their plans and roadmaps. We, based in the US can just hope, call our account managers and keep the pressure on!

However if you live in Europe, where the (re) branding of your phone by mobile operator is much less prevalent you are lucky – there are 3 updates available right now. See the links below and let me know how you like the new, shine WM 6.5

HTC Touch Pro 2

HTC Snap

Toshiba TG01

As you probably already noticed Microsoft has made public their interim Windows Mobile 6.5 release. There is ton of reviews, I will leave it up to you to judge how it is received. But if you are looking for what is new, I found this very nice table of comparison:

http://www.mobiledeployments.com/windows-mobile-6-5-feature-compare-to-6-1-and-6-01/

Cancelled Sendo WM device

I have started to work with smartphones sometime in 1998. I even have a mint prototype of what supposed to be the first Windows Mobile powered phone by Sendo – project that got canceled in 2002. Read more about it here.

Anyway fast forward to 2006 and any IT executive that was thinking about deploying mobile email / PIM and mobile applications basically had two basic option RIM/Blackberry and Windows Mobile. Each had its advantages and issues but once you had your requirements and made your decision, there was a good chance for you to run homogeneous platform. IT Helpdesk and Support, Training, Security and other departments became aware of the platform of choice and while international presence may posed a challenge with availability and the Symbian disruption (especially in Europe) the job was quite easy.

But something did happen in 2007 – the Apple released iPhone and stirred the pot. While the first generation was not suited at serious business use, the second one in 2008 added support for Microsoft Exchange and history started to repeat itself. IT managers were asked by their executives to figure out how to support iPhone, instead of their Blackberries. Regular employees started to bring their own devices and peer support helped them to get corporate email enabled. And the numbers grew.

Today with the introduction of Palm Pre into the mix, the bigger use of ruggedized devices that almost exclusively run Windows Mobile OS, over 30 new smatphone devices running Android planned for release before the end of the year and iPhone being on its 3^rd generation, the 2006 homogenous era looks like a something that will never happen again.

The reality is that most if not all IT departments and business owners have to consider supporting multiple platforms and consider the impacts and risks of all of them. There are some tools that serve multiple platforms well but most are just in their infancy. Also how to make a decision on which support and which just allow /enable but don’t provide any support?

Enterprise Mobile has been building mobile expertise since 2006. If you have any questions about what to do why don’t you send quick email or attend one of the great webinars

As I have blogged about previously, there was some interesting webcast  sessions on Windows Mobile, Security and Device Management on TechNet recently.

If you were unable to attend you can also catch a glimpse of one of the speakers I know, David Field here on TechNet Edge:
http://edge.technet.com/Media/Enterprise-Mobile-Security-Interview/

Dave Field spoke at TechEd on mobile security and gives us some insight into mobile phone security on topics such as:

• Areas where Windows Mobile security is strong against the competition
• Scenarios where companies will want to look to 3rd party solutions for mobile security
• Recommended ways to implement 2 factor authentication for phones

The Windows Mobile security whitepaper Dave mentions is available here: http://www.enterprisemobile.com/resources/white-papers.htm

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mnielsen(at)enterprisemobile.com