The Good solution also encrypts any data that’s in transit between devices and servers that reside behind firewalls. This approach extends data protection all the way from the firewall to provisioned devices – regardless of whether the devices are owned by the company or employees. Setup and configuration is straightforward and requires no significant infrastructure changes.

Good for Enterprise uses powerful authentication and encryption technologies, including a FIPS 140-2 certified cryptographic module to protect data-at-rest and data-in-transit. Good Technology implements rigorous internal penetration testing to validate its security design.

For organizations that are currently using Good for Enterprise on other smartphone platforms, support for Windows Phone is a welcome addition. With the Good for Enterprise solution, busy professionals can now choose the innovative experience delivered by Windows Phone and the added security layer offered by the Good solution for secure, encrypted email. To learn more, visit www.good.com

Also, the much anticipated Skype for Windows Phone beta app is now available for download. Windows Phone users can make and receive voice and video calls and instant messages with anyone else using Skype, whether they are on a Windows Phone or Windows PC or any of the other platforms supported by Skype. It is in beta today and a full-featured version is due later this year. You can download the beta version of the app from Marketplace.

Alan Meeus, Windows Phone Team

The Nokia Lumina 900 features a gorgeous 4.3-inch screen, sharp 8 megapixel camera with exclusive Carl Zeiss optics, and a front facing camera for video chats—all set in a sleek polycarbinate unibody.

The HTC Titan II features the biggest touchscreen of any Windows Phone (4.7-inch WVGA). It’s fast, with a 1.5 gigahertz Snapdragon processor, and delivers a great front-facing camera for video chat and a 16-megapixel rear camera with a fast wide-angle lens.  

For more information and photos of these new phones, see the Windows Phone blog at http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/windowsphone/

Also, the rollout of Windows Phone 7.5 (code-named “Mango”) is complete, and there are many enhancements and improvements – I’ve fielded a fair number of questions in the last couple of months. So I thought it might be good to provide some links to usefull resources.

Articles for IT professionals

Windows Phone 7 Guides for IT Professionals has articles available for download that focus on different topics, including features, security, using Windows Phone devices with other applications such as Microsoft SharePoint, and the Windows Phone architecture. A newer site, Windows Phone 7.5 Guides for IT Professionals, provides updated articles on these topics and descriptions of new functionality in Windows Phone 7.5.

Exchange-related information

The article “Understanding Mobile Device Management” on Microsoft TechNet provides information on configuring Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and the Exchange ActiveSync protocol. The Mobility page of the Exchange Team Blog includes information about different Windows Phone announcements and capabilities.

SharePoint-related information

Microsoft SharePoint Workspace Mobile is included with Office Mobile on Windows Phone, and provides the ability to download and synchronize Office documents with SharePoint servers. More information is available in the article “Use Microsoft SharePoint Workspace Mobile” on the Windows Phone site. Other helpful articles on using Windows Phone with SharePoint Workspace Mobile include “Configure external access for mobile devices” and “Building Windows Phone 7 applications with SharePoint 2010 Products and Unified Access
Gateway (UAG)” on TechNet.

A virtual private network (VPN) connection is required to enable access users to connect to internal SharePoint sites from outside the firewall. The only VPN server that is supported by Windows Phone is the Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG). Forefront UAG with Service Pack 1 (SP1) is recommended. For more information about Forefront UAG Sharepoint Publishing, see the “SharePoint Publishing Guide” and “Publishing SharePoint sites for SharePoint Workspace Mobile.”

System Center-related information

With Microsoft System Center 2012 Configuration Manager you can manage a wide range of mobile devices with a single administrative console. The article “System Center: Managing Mobile Devices” in TechNet magazine discusses the importance of having a solid strategy for secure device management. And “Windows Phone 7: Enterprises Go with Windows Phone 7” describes how consolidating personal and professional functions into a single mobile device made Windows Phone a compelling platform.

Third-party management solutions

Some third-party companies that offer mobile device management solutions for enterprise organizations include, Odyssey Software, Inc., and AirWatch.

IT professional-oriented apps for Windows Phone

Remote Desktop 7 by the Yalla Apps developer community is a native RDP client for Windows Phone that you can use to control remote computers over your LAN or the Internet, listen to remote audio, share your phone storage with remote computers, and more.

Another app that allows you to remotely monitor and manage PCs is PC Monitor by MMSoft Design.

And for comprehensive information, Springboard for Windows on TechNet provides recommended videos, white papers, how tos, FAQs, webcasts, and step-by-step guidance for discovering, deploying and managing Windows.

Support for users

One popular resource is the Windows Phone help and how to page, where help information is provided for people who are new to Windows Phone as well as existing Windows Phone users. Topics range from getting started instructions to deciphering status icons, using the Speech features in Windows Phone, taking pictures, and troubleshooting. There’s also a special What’s new in Windows Phone 7.5 section.

Another great resource is Microsoft Answers, which includes a Windows Phone section. I recently used it to help a colleague who thought he had noticed some poorly designed functionality. Ever since he upgraded to Mango, his calendar was filling up with all the Facebook events to which he was invited – even though he hadn’t accepted most of them.

So I went to the Windows Phone section of Microsoft Answers, searched for “facebook events” and quickly learned there’s a configuration option in Windows Phone calendar to “Only show Facebook events I’ve responded to.” (My colleague now points out this handy feature to others as if he invented it.)

Support for developers

For developers, there are two informative and interesting App Hub forums. The Windows Phone 7 forum has numerous ongoing discussions on a variety of topics, mostly about specific aspects of app development. The Account Management forum focuses on registering with and using App Hub.

Microsoft Zune software available for download

You can download Microsoft Zune software to your PC and turn your Windows Phone into a player for all your music, videos, and podcasts. You can also use Zune to listen to FM radio and go to Marketplace to search for apps. To learn more about Zune, see Get to know the Zune software. Mac users can install the Windows Phone 7 Connector to sync media files with Windows Phone.

Case studies

North Rhine-Westphalia Police delivers mobile innovation to its employees and residents on the Windows Phone. North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) Police is the largest police force in Germany, with ~50,000 police officers serving about 19 million people. NRW Police added Windows Phone to their IT-approved list of smartphones for their employees because it met their security requirements and works with their existing infrastructure. Then they worked with a Microsoft partner to build an app that delivers breaking news, search warrant, and police
station information to their employees and users.

Major car insurer sees 60 percent faster time-to-market on Windows Phone 7. Geico needed to develop its GloveBox app for Windows Phone quickly, but it wanted full feature parity with its version for the iPhone. Geico met these goals and more through its use of the familiar Microsoft .NET development environment, the distinctive “Metro” interface of Windows Phone, and a close and supportive relationship with Microsoft. Geico produced its app for Windows Phone—using prerelease code—40 percent faster than it had developed the iPhone version and believes development would have been significantly faster had mature code been available.

How Microsoft Deployed Windows Phone to Employees isn’t really a case study, but it describes how Microsoft distributed more than 50,000 Windows Phones to employees around the globe. It’s an interesting read.

Windows Phone reviews

Windows Phone 7.5 Review by Paul Thurott on SuperSite for Windows There’s a New Windows Phone! Why you should be overjoyed about Microsoft’s latest entry in the smartphone derby by Farhad Manjoo on Slate.

Happy New Year, now is a good time to upgrade to Windows Phone.

Alan Meeus, Windows Phone Team

Alan Meeus, Windows Phone Team

Most organizations work with sensitive information as part of doing business, whether dealing with confidential client information or with Intellectual Property. Information Rights Management (IRM) is a Windows Server-based technology that provides the ability to control who within the organization can view email messages and documents and what they can do with them, such as whether they can be forwarded to others and printed.

Windows Phone 7.5 was designed to fit in with existing infrastructure, and so we made Windows Phone work with IRM.

In Windows Phone 7.5, rights-managed email messages are decrypted by the Exchange Server that hosts the mailboxes of message recipients, this requires Exchange Server 2010.  Rights-managed Office documents that are sent as email attachments or downloaded from SharePoint are decrypted by the Office Mobile apps on Windows Phone. Accordingly, the ability to read and repeatedly open rights-managed Office documents requires connectivity so that users’ credentials can be verified.

Windows Phone 7.5 is the only smartphone in market that includes built-in functionality for handling rights-managed messages and Office documents.

For detailed information, see the “Rights-managed email and Office documents in Windows Phone 7.5” article on the Windows Phone 7.5 Guides for IT Professionals page on the Microsoft Download Center.

Alan Meeus, Windows Phone Team

The article provides an overview of the Windows Phone security model and how Windows Phone was designed to protect information. It describes the Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) security–related policies that can be managed by IT departments and discusses how apps are isolated from each other to help protect the operating system. In addition, the article provides information on how Windows Phone helps protect against malware and how IT departments can provide secure access to corporate resources.  

Windows Phone 7.5 also adds a number of new productivity features. This paper will help you understand that, in addition to the rich end user capabilities, Windows Phone is a flexible and secure phone that you can support with confidence. To see recent case studies of companies and IT departments that now support Windows Phone, visit Microsoft Case Studies.

Alan Meeus, Windows Phone Team

Windows Phone was designed with productivity in mind, and it achieves this design goal in a number of ways. For one, users and reviewers agree that the UI is intuitive and a pleasure to work with. But communication and collaboration involves more than just a cool UI – it requires mobile devices that are secure, and that can be integrated with existing infrastructure. So we made sure that Windows Phone 7.5 addresses these requirements in ways that enhance and complement the original design.

Windows Phone 7.5 includes the latest version of Internet Explorer Mobile, a sleek and speedy browser with full HTML5 support– but one that cannot be used to download or install malware from the web. It also includes Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) protocol 14.1, which supports complex (alphanumeric) passwords. In addition, Windows Phone 7.5 supports server search, task/to-do list synchronization, and Information Rights Management (IRM) for email and Office documents.

And for organizations that have made the move to cloud-based computing and Office 365, Windows Phone 7.5 configures pretty much everything automatically – all workers need is their ID and password.

Soon employees will also be able to stay in touch through Lync Server 2010 and the Lync Mobile app.

We’re pleased that Windows Phone is being acknowledged as an innovative smartphone. Some have even said that it’s upped the ante for smartphone design, which is quite a compliment. The Windows Phone design team appreciates all the positive comments, but there’s a lot left to do. We appreciate your feedback on this blog and what you think needs to be done to make Windows phone even better for business users. Why not submit your best Windows Phone ideas in the Suggestion Box?

We will continue working to enhance Windows Phone, but we’ve worked hard to ensure that Windows Phone 7.5 addresses the needs of users as well as IT pros. We think it’s the smart business choice, but see for yourself – we think you’ll find that it withstands scrutiny quite well.  We are starting a new series of papers on Windows Phone 7.5  with updated information to reflect the new functionality in Windows Phone 7.5. We will keep the Windows Phone 7 guide for IT professionals up for a while, in case you need them.

Alan Meeus, Windows Phone Team

MSDN will continue to host this information in the future. For an interim period, it will also remain available in the “Windows Phone 7 root certificates” article on the Windows Phone 7 Guides for IT Professionals page on the Microsoft Download Center.

Here is an overview of what we disclosed at TechEd. I will be updating the technical articles on the Download Center in the next month to reflect some of the new functionality.

• Outlook Mobile will support conversation views and the ability to organize email automatically by conversation, using the real conversation ID from Exchange Server. Doing it this way, and not just simply sorting on the subject line, has the advantage that conversation rules in Outlook on the PC also apply to Outlook Mobile  on Windows Phone. You cannot set them on the phone, though; you need a version of Exchange Server that supports this, either Exchange 2010 or Exchange Online in Office 365. This capability will make reading and managing conversations a lot easier.
• Individual Outlook folders will be pinnable to the Start screen for quick access. So if you have a folder for a specific project that stores all email related to that project, you can easily access it directly from the Start screen. If new email arrives, the Start screen tile will let you know at a glance.  :-)
• Server search will also be available so users will be able to search in the server for email messages that are no longer in their phones.
• There will be Information Rights Management (IRM) support for both email and documents in Outlook Mobile and Office Mobile. This is a big subject, so I will write a separate blog on this and an article, too.
• We have added complex password support, with associated Exchange ActiveSync policies, so organizations can implement this if they choose to.  
• We’ve also added built-in Office 365 auto discovery and auto provisioning capabilities, which will make it simple and easy to connect to Office 365 Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync services. We demonstrated Lync Mobile for Windows Phone for the first time. This Lync client will enhance Unified Communications with instant messaging and presence on the phone later this year. And did you know you can manage all the EAS policies in Office 365?

There were lots of Windows Phone activities at the conference. The Windows Phone booth in the expo received a lot of traffic, and there were demos and all the latest Windows Phone devices so attendees could give them a try. The Windows Phone educational sessions were well attended, and there were also many developer workshops. If you wanted to give app development a try, “From 0 to a Windows Phone App in Two Hours” was the best option. Windows Phone session information can be downloaded from the Microsoft TechEd North America website.

On the application platform side of Mango we also introduced “targeted distribution,” which will allow a developer to submit a Windows Phone app as “hidden.” As a result, the app will not be discoverable in Windows Phone Marketplace. The developer can then distribute a deep link to a targeted group of users, say employees of a company, and have them install the app using the deep link. This approach will give organizations the option to upload business-focused apps and get them to their employees.

Windows Phone is the smart choice for businesses. It integrates with existing Windows infrastructures and Office 365, apps can be developed quickly, and the most recent announcements lay a foundation for new productivity and collaboration possibilities powered by Office 365.

For more information, check out the following links:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/why-windows-phone-in-the-enterprise

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/windowsphone/archive/2011/05/16/productivity-takes-a-big-step-forward-in-mango.aspx

For anyone who isn’t aware, Office 365 is a Microsoft cloud subscription service currently in beta release that includes the following services accessible via a browser:

• Email and calendar services powered by Microsoft Exchange Online
• Instant messaging and presence of coworkers powered by Lync Online
• Websites, collaboration services, and Office Web Apps powered by Microsoft SharePoint Online

Windows Phone is the only phone with Outlook Mobile and Office Mobile built in, and when Mango is available it will work seamlessly with the Exchange Online, Lync Online, and SharePoint Online services in Office 365. The combination will allow you to stay organized and connected to your email, colleagues, and content while on the go. And you will abe ble to act on the latest information because your phone is synced to a team site in Office 365 while you’re out and about.

Here’s how quick and easy it will be to connect to Office 365 with Windows Phone Mango: you will enter a Office 365 login and password, and Outlook Mobile will configure your email, contacts, calendars, and team site right on the Windows Phone.

After setup, you can stay on top of emails by grouping them by conversation for easy viewing and following. And let’s say there’s a really useful email folder that you access frequently; you can pin it to the Start screen for glance-and-go viewing. These and other new features that are coming in the next version of Windows Phone are designed to help you stay organized and connected to your business.

With the SharePoint Team site in Office 365, colleagues will be able to share the latest documents with you even when you’re on the go. The latest versions are automatically synced to your Windows Phone when you open SharePoint Workspace Mobile, which makes version control much easier. If you’re going offline, like getting on an airplane, you can save a copy on your phone to edit and upload it back to the cloud when you’re online again. Best of all, you can open, edit, or comment on Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents and see them in the same formatting that you’d expect on a PC. That’s the power of Office Mobile built in. Again. these are just glimpses of the new capabilities. I hope you’re as excited as I am about the potential of Windows Phone and Office 365.

For more info on Windows Phone, visit www.windowsphone.com, and for more info on Microsoft Office 365, visit www.office365.com.