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IT Needs to Consolidate Wireless (Continued)

Focusing on the Enterprise Market
Q: We quoted Bill Gates last March as saying, "We will invest, and invest, and invest in mobility." Where is Microsoft investing and what should the IT community expect to see come out of that in the near future?

JC: This is a huge business by any measure. Next year, more than 500 million mobile devices will be sold. The investment profile is shifting from getting the device right to getting the provisioning/systems management side right. Increasingly, companies are making larger unit buys and standardizing on platforms and even on certain hardware, to make them easier to manage and to roll out solutions faster. We've seen the road maps for devices set to roll out. We have operator relationships. Now we need to make it easier for people to adopt our devices.

Q: Some vendors are so focused on the huge consumer market that they treat the enterprise market as an afterthought. What is Microsoft doing with mobile devices to meet the needs of IT, which would seem to be one of your competitive strengths?

JC: It is puzzling to me that there is so much focus on consumers. People want to use mobile devices to meet both their personal needs and their business needs. They don't want to carry two devices. We come from a position of strength and can help redefine the market.

We have an important role to play in helping to roll out these devices. Increasingly, mobile solutions are becoming a software game as opposed to an industrial design game. The shape of the phones continues to be important, but now mobility is about design and software.

There are many things we are doing to service the IT professional. We have relationships with 28 systems integrators, most of which are in vertical areas, that can help an enterprise roll out mobile solutions. We work with a number of systems management and provisioning companies.

Q: The promise of wireless access to enterprise data has existed for years, but hasn't taken off as rapidly as many thought. Cuts in spending for all new projects are one factor. But beyond that, IT is concerned about security, reliability, total cost, device proliferation, fragmentation, and provisioning issues. What is Microsoft doing to address these concerns, starting with security?

JC: You want to have as high a common denominator as possible that satisfies as many people as possible, but without penalizing those that don't need a particular level of security. If we listened to everyone and built everything into the platform, it would have a much larger footprint. We are a part of the trustworthy computing initiative at Microsoft. Our approach is a combination of doing things ourselves, and creating an ecosystem around us with partners that address more specific security needs. With each release of our platform, we raise the bar on security.

This is partly because that's what our customers ask us to do, but also because it is a competitive advantage. Palm and Symbian don't have a strong history of building secure platforms.

Q: What are your IT customers telling you they need?

JC: There is no clustering around a single, common area. You talk to the Army and they have certain concerns. People in banking are more transaction-oriented and they want other things. Because this is an open platform, you can modify the platform based on customer requirements.

Q: Bryan Glancey, a manager at St. Louis-based wireless security services provider Mobile Armor, warned after a speech at the Defcon security conference: "Don't put any secure information on your Pocket PC or your Palm. … They don't have any security features built in." How would you answer his concerns?

JC: Security is certainly an important factor when deploying any corporate solution, but I would correct his assertion about Windows Mobile-based devices like Pocket PCs. Windows Mobile devices do have built-in security features similar to laptop computers. Automatic power-on passwords, strong encryption, corporate network and Web authentication (e.g., Windows NT challenge/response and Secure Sockets Layer), virtual private networking (VPN), public key infrastructure (PKI), and virus-scanning offerings are all available for Pocket PCs today. These are enterprise-ready devices, and we've seen positive adoption and reception of these devices in the enterprise space.