Windows Phone 7 to Support Business Features

Windows Phone 7, the next version of Microsoft’s smartphone platform, will support Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), including features to manage phones from Exchange Server and will let users connect and work with documents on SharePoint 2010 servers using mobile versions of Office applications. However, at launch it won’t work with other Microsoft technologies, including System Center Configuration Manager, and corporate applications will have to be deployed through the Windows Phone Marketplace. IT departments should prepare to support Phone 7 as devices come into the enterprise but might not be able to standardize on them, especially if they rely on custom mobile applications.

Planned Phones Not Just for Consumers

At the TechEd conference in June 2010, Microsoft began to lift the veil on how Windows Phone 7 will work with Microsoft business and productivity applications, particularly Exchange and SharePoint Server, and demonstrated Office Mobile 2010 applications running on the platform. Announced in Feb. 2010, Phone 7 is a clean break from Microsoft’s current Windows Mobile platform: it will feature a new user interface organized around functional “hubs” (such as People, Games, and Marketplace), a different application platform based on Silverlight and the XNA game development platform, and tighter restrictions on hardware and third-party application design.