First Look: Windows Phone 7

Does your organization run Microsoft Office, Exchange or SharePoint? If so,
then you’ll want to know about the new features in the soon-to-be-released
Windows Phone 7 that will let you collaborate across these programs. Here
are five ways organizations can benefit from the new Microsoft smartphone:

Leverage existing infrastructure.

With approximately 300 million Microsoft
Exchange mailboxes and more than 500 million Microsoft Office users worldwide,
there’s clearly a need for a smartphone that can offer mobility to all
these users. Windows Phone 7 will leverage existing messaging infrastructure
built on Exchange and Exchange Active Sync. The Windows Phone 7 operating
system enables new business scenarios for mobile users through document sharing
and collaboration based on SharePoint.

Increase user productivity.

Earlier Microsoft smartphone platforms offered users mobile versions of Microsoft
Office tools such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.

Windows Phone 7 integrates these productivity applications into a new user
experience called the Office Hub. Built using managed code and the Microsoft
Silverlight application development platform, the Office Hub makes it easy
for mobile users to be productive. For example, using Office Hub, a user can
quickly access, read, edit and share different Office documents from a single
integrated interface on his or her smartphone.

Keep data secure.

Mobile devices always present security risks. Loss or theft of a smartphone
can lead to data leakage and serious legal and financial consequences. Windows
Phone 7 includes numerous management and security features to help prevent
such data loss. The phone limits unwanted data transfers by denying access
to data via PC tethering or support for removable Secure Digital cards.

Windows Phone 7 also makes it difficult for users to accidentally download
and install malware on their phones while browsing the web. The phone uses
managed code that isolates applications to prevent them from communicating
with the phone’s OS and other running applications. Additionally, by
deploying Microsoft
Forefront Unified Access Gateway, organizations can let users securely
access resources on the internal network from anywhere.

Build new experiences.

Organizations often build their own custom applications to meet specific
needs that off-the-shelf applications may not address.

IT shops that build managed apps on the .NET Framework and Windows Communication
Foundation, using tools such as Visual
Studio and Silverlight, can leverage existing developer skills and tools
to extend apps to Windows Phone 7.

Use the cloud.

You don’t have to host your own Exchange or SharePoint servers to take
advantage of the messaging and collaboration capabilities of Windows Phone
7. That’s because Microsoft also offers hosted Exchange and SharePoint
services to businesses through its Business Productivity Online Suite offerings.
In other words, users can download and use web apps on their phone to work
with business data securely stored in the cloud.