I start today's entry thinking of Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain with his famous quote: "Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated." Almost two weeks with not a peep or barely a tweet from me. Even on vacation, this would never happen. Heck, when I was horribly ill at the end of last year, I didn't miss posting for this long.
My new job is making me work so many hours that I haven't frankly had a moment to think, never mind but those thoughts to keyboard. I did decide to take a day off yesterday, which allowed me to pause and reflect on some of the news out there regarding Windows Phone 7 Series and its future impact on the enterprise.
As an avid reader of the interwebs, including the commentary shared on this site, I found this link over at FierceMobileIT that shares the viewpoints of various industry experts on the future impact of Windows Phone 7 Series (still hate the name) on the enterprise. The article's intro ends with the following quote:
The news broke last week and many are anxious to see whether or not it will be an appropriate chassis for the enterprise. Unfortunately, you will have to temper your anticipation a bit; the platform will not be released until the end of 2010.
Candidly, I can't help but feel this is the sentence we should have read at the end of the article, because there's really nothing more to say for now. Microsoft did a fine job of sharing the user experience of its new mobile platform, as well as some of the new consumer functionality of the platform. It however, shared virtually nothing on what it will be doing for the enterprise, other than to ensure that it does have an enterprise "strategy" that will be shared at this month's MIX event.
Anything else in my opinion is pure speculation. We don't know what we don't know, and while we all want to speculate on what could and could not happen in the future on most topics, this turns very quickly into pure congecture. Some of the other articles I have seen on the Interweb border on rumor mongering.
Let me say one thing. If you are a CIO or any other kind of IT or Line of Business decision maker wondering what to think of Windows Phone 7 Series, let me ask you to do two things:
- Stop. We don't know what we don't know. We all have questions on this topic, as did I in a previous entry.
- Know that you will have some of your employees who will like the platform and that you will have to deal with it, assuming you allow individually liable devices into your workplace.
Anything else is completely up in the air. We don't know yet how much interest people (i.e., consumers) will have in the platform, and we certainly don't know how Microsoft is going to address backwards compatibility with what is now being called Windows Phone Classic and/or Starter Edition (a.k.a. Wiindows Mobile 6.x)
Again, hopefully Microsoft will share more information at MIX, but until then, I would advise all business professionals to take everything about Windows Phone 7 Series with a grain of salt. Such a massive change in technology will require judicious and level headed thinking on your part as you deal with this new twist on your mobility strategy.
Let's learn together as we navigate these waters.
