Another TechEd session of interest to enterprise customers looking at Windows Telephone 7 is focused on Office Mobile 2010 on Windows Telephone seven and how that forthcoming tweaked version of Microsoft;s cellular version of Office can work with Exchange Server 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010. Another session highlights how Microsoft;s Forefront Unified Access Gateway enterprise security product can be used to keep secure email and documents on Windows Telephone 7 devices.
In spite of these omissions, the TechEd Windows Phone seven periods should offer company people a glimmer of hope. Maybe Microsoft hasn;t completely forgotten about its core audience in attempting to catch Apple and the iPhone….
When I used to be perusing the agenda for TechEd 2010, Microsoft;s June conference for IT pros and developers, I discovered a lot of sessions focused on Windows Telephone 7 about the docket. And never just the exact same old gaming and Facebook-connect demos we;ve been viewing for that past couple of months.
Remember Microsoft officials admitted there would be no assistance for Windows Cellular six.5 apps on Windows Telephone 7 devices — leading a variety of enterprise watchers and clients to question Microsoft;s commitment to enterprise users who;ve developed custom mobile line-of-business apps? Well,
microsoft Office 2010 Activation, according to the TechEd agenda, all hope might not be lost on that front. Microsoft has a “Porting Windows Mobile six.5 code to Windows Telephone 7″ session planned. The synopsis:
“Windows Mobile six.five applications will not compile on Windows Phone 7 without modification. However,
Office 2010 Home And Business, because of the use of C# as a base language for both development platforms, and the fact that Silverlight and XNA are built on top of the .NET platform, there are many scenarios where developers can reuse existing work. For example, with appropriate separation of logic and UI code in a line of business application, there are many cases where the enterprise logic can be copied over and wired up to the Silverlight UI framework on Windows Phone seven. This session will help developers better understand how to port as significantly existing work from a Windows Cellular 6.5 application to a new Silverlight based Windows Telephone 7 application.”
“Come join us for this interactive session on code compatibility between prior Windows Phone applications and Windows Telephone seven. Come talk to experienced application developers and hear what they have to say about code compatibility and share your own experiences with other attendees. Even though the programming paradigm for Windows Phone seven differs from prior Windows Phone versions, managed applications are still written in C#. Taking many best practices into consideration, the majority of your existing code, with the exception of the User Interface,
Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate, can run on Windows Telephone 7.”
Although Microsoft execs have tried to assure enterprise customers that the coming Windows Phone seven devices wouldn;t be overly consumer-centric, more than a number of enterprise buyers currently have written them off. But possibly Microsoft hasn;t turned its back on mobile small business clients following all.
There;s also a TechEd session entitled “Microsoft;s Next Generation Cellular Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP).” MEAP “allows corporate IT departments to assistance multiple cellular applications on a single platform,” the synopsis notes,
Microsoft Office 2010 Key, and touts ways developers and customers can “save money by steering away from point solutions” by moving to Microsoft;s next-generation MEAP stack — which “will assistance a broader range of cellular platforms and operating systems including Windows Telephone 7.”
There are no periods listed that discuss how/if Microsoft will allow enterprise end users to get beta and/or custom company applications on their phones without going through the Microsoft Windows Phone Marketplace. (That was something many folks asked about at the Mix ‘10 conference earlier this year,
Microsoft Office Professional Plus, with Microsoft officials saying “Stay tuned.”) There also are no mentions in the agenda of any kind of remedies for Windows Telephone seven;s lack of true multitasking and cut-and-paste.
Update: Microsoft tweaked the session description and the title of it immediately after I contacted them for comment. The new session title is the more watered-down “Prepare for Windows Telephone 7 Development! Coding practices you should start using now in Windows Cellular.”
Update: In other Windows Telephone seven news, Microsoft released on April 29 a refresh of the Community Technology Preview of its Windows Telephone Developer Tools.The update is intended to enable development using the final release of VS2010, but also includes a number of new features, which are listed in a new post on the Windows Phone Developer blog. The first CTP of the phone tools didn;t work at all with the final VS 2010.
I asked Microsoft officials whether this marked a reversal in the corporation;s backward compatibility positioning and was sent the following statement: