Microsoft has announced a patnership with Good Technology to offer better encrypted emailing service for Windows Phone with commercial availability target for early Quarter 2 of 2012.
Although Microsoft has a heave heavy presence in the enterprise business sector with the Windows operating system, the company has been lacking on the mobile side. The features that are available with Windows phone since it’s first release and even the Mango update has not lured enterprise customers. Microsoft, with a partnership with Good Technology, is trying to enhance is enterprise mobile offering.
Good Technology, a company that offers advanced secured and managing mobility service for a variety of mobile devices in the enterprise level, is adding the Windows phone live to support its services. According to the company website, “Good will provide FIPS-certified 192 bit AES encryption for end-to-end mobile messaging for the Windows Phone platform to enable secured accessing of corporate data using Good for Enterprise. With these powerful security technologies, businesses will be able to offer employees even more choice when supporting ‘bring-your-own-device’ (BYOD) environments.”
With the heavy presence of Android-based devices and iPhone in the consumer market, Microsoft’s strategy to target the enterprise market is important to create mindshare in the enterprise. This strategy particularly is important with the already establish that Microsoft has in the enterprise with the Office productivity suite, its operating system, and the managing enterprise services that includes SharePoint and Office365.
“Every customer makes an individual decision when it comes to selecting a personal mobile device, and more and more people are choosing Windows Phone for both its integrated experiences and elegant design,” Tom from the Windows Phone division explains. He then continues emphasizing the reason behind to choose Good Technology as partner for offering email enterprise solution “Good Technology is a leader in providing encrypted email access to enterprise employees. This is why we selected Good as our Windows Phone 7.5 preferred partner solution for secured, encrypted mobile messaging. With its help we can now extend the Windows Phone experience by adding powerful security technologies to enterprise email, enabling busy professionals to stay connected and productive.”
And while Microsoft is now relying on Good Technology to offer encrypted email service to enterprise for its mobile operations system, there are indications that Microsoft will be able to do a better job on its own with the upcoming release of its Windows Phone OS codenamed Apollo. According to several rumors and leaked information that have been circulating on the web, Apollo will offer the same level of group policy and security features that are currently available for windows operation system. In this sense, this strategy represents a step to address enterprise needs in terms of encrypted email services, which is not present on Windows Phone with its current release.
Further reading: Microsoft, Windows Phone 7
