Microsoft has been quite explicit on the matter: Windows Phone 7 Series is being designed first and foremost for the consumer market. The result is the emphasis on a strong, consistent, effective user interface, possibly at the expense of functionality; Microsoft wants to have this thing out in time for the "holiday season" this year, so there's a limited window for further development, at least for the initial release.That said, the phone does have features aimed at the enterprise market. Obviously, there's Exchange support, with ActiveSync, providing push mail, address book sync, and all those features that we know and love. In common with Outlook 2010, Windows Phone 7 Series also seems to support multiple Exchange servers concurrently. I say "seems" because it didn't quite work when we tried, but that seemed to be due to a bad password rather than any fundamental flaw—the phone was happy to accept the configuration and created two distinct Outlook Tiles on the Start page, so it looked like it was doing the right thing.
The other big enterprise feature is Mobile Office. Microsoft showed off Mobile Excel, using it to edit and save a spreadsheet, and the new Mobile apps, in their Office hub, seem to be much more functional than the current offerings for Windows Mobile. If nothing else, the high resolution of the demo devices (800x480) made Excel much more useful.
What there won't be is much beyond that. When I asked if the devices would support, for example, policy enforcement to disable cameras (as many workplaces prohibit the use of camera phones, and with 5 MP cameras a mandatory part of Windows Phone 7 Series devices, policy-based lockouts are the only option), full device encryption, or remote wipe, the answer was nonspecific but broadly negative.
Though I would be quite surprised if, at the very least, encryption and wiping were not a part of the official release (many Exchange servers are configured to refuse to allow ActiveSync with devices that don't support these features), things extensive policy support and application management won't be a part of the initial release, with a result that the new platform may well represent a regression relative to the current Windows Mobile 6.x/System Center Configuration Manager platform, and move Windows even further from the full range of remote device management capabilities offered by BlackBerry Enterprise Server.
Coupled with the continued refusal to clarify how enterprise applications might be deployed (though the company says that it will provide an answer within the next few months), this leaves Windows Phone 7 Series looking quite anaemic for enterprise users at the onset.
Microsoft believes that Exchange support plus Mobile Office will be enough to make the platform compelling to corporate customers. I'm not convinced. And while I believe that targeting consumers is the right thing from the perspective of building a phone that isn't miserable to use (unlike the current Windows Mobile platform), I don't think it needed to come at the expense of these enterprise features.
Source: Arstechnica.com
