Ten years ago, we created the Pocket PC and Compaq launched the iPAQ.
This would become the most compelling Mobile Enterprise Application Platform of the last decade. In 2006 I created the Windows Mobile Line of Business Accelerator to help jumpstart the efforts of corporate developers + enterprise ISVs with advanced tools and technologies like the .NET Compact Framework, SQL Server Compact and Visual Studio.
It’s a new decade and we’ve created the most powerful Mobile Enterprise Application Platform ever with Windows Phone 7. Next week at Tech Ed North America 2010, I will begin the process of jumpstarting your enterprise development efforts again with Silverlight, WCF, Azure and Visual Studio 2010. Give yourself an edge and come check out my sessions:
Developing Occasionally Connected Applications for Windows Phone 7
The Silverlight development environment has proven itself to be a rich, capable, and adaptable runtime that has reached across platforms to support Windows, the Mac and the Web. Silverlight has now become the application platform for Windows Phone 7, which is great news for new and existing Silverlight developers looking to support this exciting new phone platform. To ensure the best experience for mobile users, apps built for Windows Phone 7 must implement an occasionally-connected pattern of development that Silverlight developers for the other platforms may find unfamiliar. In this session, learn how to build mobile apps that adjust their behavior based on changing network conditions. Also learn how to conquer unreliable wireless networks by implementing RESTful principles to ensure your messages are both compact and fast. Then take those WCF REST services and use them to retrieve database tables, rows, and columns in order to drive the behavior of your mobile applications. Finally, learn how to build an in-memory database that you can query with LINQ and save its data to Isolated Storage to ensure that your Windows Phone apps keep working regardless of network conditions.
Microsoft’s Next Generation Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP)
A Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) allows corporate IT departments to support multiple mobile applications on a single platform. Gartner states that this market currently tops $1 billion and forecasts that 95% of the world’s organizations will standardize on a single MEAP offering by 2012. Companies looking for a better ROI are moving to reusable platforms instead of building tactical, ad-hoc mobile solutions that support only a single app. Attendees of this session will learn how to save money by steering away from point solutions and on to Microsoft’s MEAP stack. Come see what Microsoft’s Next-Gen Mobile Enterprise Application Platform looks like and learn how it will support a broader range of mobile platforms and operating systems including Windows Phone 7 and Azure.
Visual Studio is used to build the mobile logic and UI. Merge Replication provides occasionally-connected data synchronization between SQL Server Compact on the mobile device and SQL Server in the data center. SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio is used to visually create connections to back-end systems like SAP or databases like Oracle. Data in transit is secured via SSL or VPN, data at rest is encrypted via device encryption, SQL Server Compact, BitLocker or programmatically through the Crypto API. Integration packages that communicate with back-end systems are encrypted and digitally signed.