The Nokia Lumia 900 won the Best of CES award in the Smartphone category and it’s no surprise.  Before listing off the impressive specs, just look at this gorgeous piece of hardware.  Looks matter…trust me.  Windows Phone is already the most elegant mobile operating system.  Breathtaking industrial design is the other half of the equation.  When paired with iconic hardware, it’s like pairing your favorite Walla Walla Cabernet with your favorite steak.

I can’t count the number of reviews and comments stating that Windows Phone on the Lumia 900 has surpassed the iPhone.  If you follow the U.S. wireless market, then you know that things like 4G LTE network speeds, large screens, front-facing cameras, and dual-core processors are the current drivers of smartphone sales.  The Lumia 900 addresses three of those drivers with support for AT&T’s 4G LTE network, a 4.3-inch AMOLED ClearBlack display, and a front-facing camera for video calls.  It’s powered by a single 1.4 GHz processor and if you’ve paid attention to all the reviews in the press, you’ve heard that Windows Phone runs circles around its dual-core competitors.  Better software design, better engineering, more efficient algorithms, and optimized coding techniques means you can do more with less.  Last but not least, the Lumia 900 comes with an amazing 8MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics.

The HTC Titan II came to the CES party guns-blazing with a monster of a smartphone.  It tics all the required boxes needed for sales by delivering a massive 4.7 inch screen, support for AT&T’s 4G LTE network, and a front-facing camera.  The 1.5Ghz Snapdragon 2 processor gives this superphone all the horsepower it needs.

Joining the camera arms-race with the Lumia 900, the Titan II comes equipped with a whopping 16 megapixel camera that can capture 720p video.  If you’re looking for a giant phone that can go head-to-head with the Galaxy Nexus, this is your device.

2012 is already shaping up to be a great year with compelling hardware matched-up with Windows Phone 7.5, but what else does this platform need to make my prediction come true?  Oh yeah, apps.  Do you remember back in the 80′s when DOS-based PCs from IBM and Compaq gave Apple IIs and Macs more than they could handle?  It might not have been eye-catching, but DOS had more apps that allowed consumers and companies to be successful.  In the 90′s, Windows ran away with the computing market with the Mac, Linux, NeXT, and OS/2 unable to compete in the app department.  Why do you think this was the case?  I know a big reason was because Borland and Microsoft made better and easier-to-use development tools for Windows.

With 50,000+ apps in the Marketplace, Windows Phone is surging forward and now sits in third-place behind the iPhone App Store and the Android Market.  Aside from developers betting on the success of a platform, they need development tools, emulators, and programming languages that make it easy for them to be productive.  When I look at the velocity at which new apps are being added to the Windows Phone Marketplace, it tells me that Visual Studio is making a big difference.

In my job, I have to work with the development tools for all the major smartphone platforms and I can tell you without drinking any Kool-Aid that the competition isn’t even close.  Most iPhone developers I know find that learning Objective-C from the NeXT operating system to be a daunting task compared to modern, high-level languages like C# and VB.  While the world is full of Java developers, the complexity of cobbling the necessary tools together needed to build for Android apps is a real productivity killer.  Just running Eclipse on JDK 1.6 sucks the life and performance out of my fast Windows 7 laptop.  Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone is free and the emulator + SDKs all download and install together making the whole process fast and simple.  Apps get access to all phone sensors, a local database (SQL Server Compact), and Metro design.

Better productivity means faster time-to-market which means more apps for Windows Phone.

If you’re a web designer/developer, Internet Explorer 9 is alive and well on Windows Phone 7.5.  This means you’re no longer held hostage to the highly-fragmented WebKit mobile browser platform.  You get a hardware-accelerated, amazingly fast browser with support for more “fully-baked” HTML5 standards like Web Storage, Geolocation, Canvas, Audio and Video.

The lightning fast-Chakra JavaScript engine supports ECMAScript 5 which means your DOM interactions and Ajax web service calls will blur the lines with native apps.  When you retrieve data from the cloud or your on-premise servers via Ajax, you’ll now be able to persist it offline in Web Storage.  Support for CSS3 means things will be beautiful, 2D transforms will occur, and media queries will give you responsive design.

So here we stand with the best smartphone operating system, best hardware, best development tools and the best mobile web browser.  I’m certain that Windows Phone with its army of app developers, OEMs and Mobile Operator partners will be marching to victory this year.

Be fearless,

Rob

As you can see from the picture above:

1. For the Management Tools Critical Capability, there is no Cloud-based device management solution, policy-enforcement, or software distribution solution from Microsoft for Android. As I mentioned in last week’s post, consumer software distribution comes from the Android Market and the enterprise equivalent is facilitated via internal web servers and user-clickable URLs. Since Android is a wide-open system, competing markets and app stores are on the rise from Amazon and others.
2. For both the Client and Server Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and Multichannel Tool Critical Capability, Android uses Visual Studio. Endpoint development consists of HTML5, ECMAScript 5, and CSS3 delivered by ASP.NET via Web Roles. WCF REST + JSON Web services can also be created and consumed via Ajax calls from the browser. On the Cloud side of things, the Windows Azure SDK plugs into Visual Studio and provides Android developers with everything they need to build Cloud applications. It includes a Cloud emulator to simulate all aspects of Windows Azure and AppFabric on their development computer. In scenarios where native development is required by the customers, the Windows Azure Toolkit for Android can be used to allow Java via Eclipse to securely communicate with the Microsoft cloud.
3. For the cross-platform Application Client Runtime Critical Capability, Android uses the WebKit browser called Chrome to provide HTML5 + CSS3 + ECMAScript5 capabilities. Offline storage is important to keep potentially disconnected Android smartphones and tablets working and this is facilitated by Web Storage which is accessible via JavaScript.
4. For the Security Critical Capability, Android 3.0 and higher provides hardware encryption based on the user’s device passcode for data-at-rest. Data-in-transit is secured via SSL and VPN. LDAP API support allows it to access corporate directory services. Auth in the Microsoft cloud is handled via the Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control Service (ACS).
5. For the Enterprise Application Integration Tools Critical Capability, Android can reach out to servers directly via Web Services or indirectly through the Cloud via the Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus to connect to other enterprise packages.
6. The Multichannel Server Critical Capability to support any open protocol is handled automatically by Windows Azure. Cross-Platform wire protocols riding on top of HTTP are exposed by Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and include SOAP, REST and Atompub. Cross-Platform data serialization is also provided by WCF including XML, JSON, and OData. These Multichannel capabilities support thick clients making web service calls as well as thin web clients making Ajax calls. Distributed caching to dramatically boost the performance of any client is provided by Windows Azure AppFabric Caching.
7. As you might imagine, the Hosting Critical Capability is handled by Windows Azure. Beyond providing the most complete solution of any Cloud provider, Windows Azure Connect provides an IPSec-protected connection with your On-Premises network and SQL Azure Data Sync can be used to move data between SQL Server and SQL Azure. This gives you the Hybrid Cloud solution you might be looking for.
8. For the Packaged Mobile Apps or Components Critical Capability, Android runs cross-platform mobile apps including Skype, Bing, MSN, Tag, Hotmail, and of course the critical ActiveSync component that makes push emails, contacts, calendars, and device management policies possible.

While Android 3.0 and higher meets many of Gartner’s Critical Capabilities, it doesn’t fare very well when it comes to cloud-based device management.  While other mobile device platforms also come up short in this department, I’m sure this will change in the coming year.  The tidal wave of CoIT means that device management in the future will look very different from how it did 5 years ago.  Expect a clear separation between corporate apps/data and personal apps/data to be managed.

Best Regards,

Rob

As you can see from the picture above:

1. For the Management Tools Critical Capability, there is no Cloud-based device management solution, policy-enforcement, or software distribution solution from Microsoft for iOS.  As I mentioned in last week’s post, consumer software distribution comes from the App Store and the enterprise equivalent is facilitated via internal web servers and user-clickable URLs.
2. For both the Client and Server Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and Multichannel Tool Critical Capability, iOS uses Visual Studio.  Endpoint development consists of HTML5, ECMAScript 5, and CSS3 delivered by ASP.NET via Web Roles.  WCF REST + JSON Web services can also be created and consumed via Ajax calls from the browser.  On the Cloud side of things, the Windows Azure SDK plugs into Visual Studio and provides iOS developers with everything they need to build Cloud applications. It includes a Cloud emulator to simulate all aspects of Windows Azure and AppFabric on their development computer. In scenarios where native development is required by the customers, the Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS can be used to allow XCode/Objective-C to securely communicate with the Microsoft cloud.
3. For the cross-platform Application Client Runtime Critical Capability, iOS uses the WebKit browser called Safari to provide HTML5 + CSS3 + ECMAScript5 capabilities. Offline storage is important to keep potentially disconnected iPhones and iPads working and this is facilitated by Web Storage which is accessible via JavaScript.
4. For the Security Critical Capability, iOS provides AES 256 hardware encryption as well as Data Protection based on the user’s device passcode for data-at-rest. Data-in-transit is secured via SSL, VPN, and 802.1X.  Auth in the Microsoft cloud is handled via the Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control Service (ACS).
5. For the Enterprise Application Integration Tools Critical Capability, iOS can reach out to servers directly via Web Services or indirectly through the Cloud via the Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus to connect to other enterprise packages.
6. The Multichannel Server Critical Capability to support any open protocol is handled automatically by Windows Azure. Cross-Platform wire protocols riding on top of HTTP are exposed by Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and include SOAP, REST and Atompub. Cross-Platform data serialization is also provided by WCF including XML, JSON, and OData. These Multichannel capabilities support thick clients making web service calls as well as thin web clients making Ajax calls. Distributed caching to dramatically boost the performance of any client is provided by Windows Azure AppFabric Caching.
7. As you might imagine, the Hosting Critical Capability is handled by Windows Azure. Beyond providing the most complete solution of any Cloud provider, Windows Azure Connect provides an IPSec-protected connection with your On-Premises network and SQL Azure Data Sync can be used to move data between SQL Server and SQL Azure. This gives you the Hybrid Cloud solution you might be looking for.
8. For the Packaged Mobile Apps or Components Critical Capability, iOS runs cross-platform mobile apps including OneNote, Bing, Tag, and of course the critical ActiveSync component that makes push emails, contacts, calendars, and device management policies possible.

While iOS meets many of Gartner’s Critical Capabilities, it doesn’t fare very well when it comes to cloud-based device management.  That being said, this is not a strong area for many mobile endpoints at this stage of the game.

Next week, I’ll cover how Android connects to an On-Premises Microsoft infrastructure.

Best Regards,

Rob

Since Windows Embedded Handheld uses an advanced version of the operating system kernel used by Windows Mobile 6.5.3, many of the techniques and best practices I’ve taugh customers and developers all over the world still apply.  While it still uses the slotted memory model found in Windows CE 5 with 32 processes and 32 MB of memory per process, you’ll find that numerous enhancements and tuning has taken place to give your line of business apps more of what they need.  I’m talking about more memory per process and improved performance.  Therefore, I’d like you to sit back and watch the video of a presentation I delivered at Tech Ed in Los Angeles a couple of years ago so you can better learn what this mobile platform has to offer in the form of better memory management and improved performance:

A recent Gartner report recommends that organizations should stay with Windows Embedded Handheld as the best mobile platform for enterprise line of business needs.  Great devices are available from OEMs like Intermec, Motorola, Psion, and Honeywell just to name a few.  I hope this video helps you with any memory management or performance issues you may need to deal with in your enterprise mobile apps.

Best Regards,
Rob

As you can see from the picture above:

1. For the Management Tools Critical Capability, there is no Cloud-based device management solution for Windows Phone.  Targeted and beta software distribution is supported through the Windows Phone Marketplace via Windows Live ID’s and deep links.
2. For both the Client and Server Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and Multichannel Tool Critical Capability, Windows Phone uses Visual Studio.  The free Windows Phone SDK plugs into Visual Studio and provides developers with everything they need to build mobile applications. It even includes a Windows Phone emulator so developers don’t have to own a phone to develop apps.  On the Cloud side of things, the Windows Azure SDK plugs into Visual Studio and provides developers with everything they need to build Cloud applications. It includes a Cloud emulator to simulate all aspects of Windows Azure on their development computer.
3. For the cross-platform Application Client Runtime Critical Capability, Windows Phone uses the Silverlight flavor of .NET for thick clients. For thin clients, it uses Internet Explorer 9 to provide HTML5 + CSS3 + ECMAScript5 capabilities. Offline storage is important to keep potentially disconnected mobile clients working and this is facilitated by SQL Server Compact + Isolated Storage for thick clients and Web Storage for thin clients.
4. For the Security Critical Capability, Windows Phone provides security for 3rd party application data-at-rest via AES 256, data-in-transit via SSL, & Authorization/Authentication via the Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control Service (ACS).
5. For the Enterprise Application Integration Tools Critical Capability, Windows Phone can reach out to servers directly via Web Services or indirectly through the Cloud via the Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus to connect to other enterprise packages.
6. The Multichannel Server Critical Capability to support any open protocol is handled automatically by Windows Azure. Cross-Platform wire protocols riding on top of HTTP are exposed by Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and include SOAP, REST and Atompub. Cross-Platform data serialization is also provided by WCF including XML, JSON, and OData.  These Multichannel capabilities support thick clients making web service calls as well as thin web clients making Ajax calls. Distributed caching to dramatically boost the performance of any client is provided by Windows Azure AppFabric Caching.
7. As you might imagine, the Hosting Critical Capability is handled by Windows Azure. Beyond providing the most complete solution of any Cloud provider, Windows Azure Connect provides an IPSec-protected connection with your On-Premises network and SQL Azure Data Sync can be used to move data between SQL Server and SQL Azure. This gives you the Hybrid Cloud solution you might be looking for.
8. For the Packaged Mobile Apps or Components Critical Capability, Windows Phone runs cross-platform mobile apps include Office/Lync/IE/Outlook/Bing.

As you can see, Windows Phone meets many of Gartner’s Critical Capabilities, but is missing cloud-based device management and isn’t as strong as Windows 7 in areas of full-device security.

Next week, I’ll cover how Windows Embedded Handheld (Windows Mobile 6.5.3) connects to an On-Premises Microsoft infrastructure.

Best Regards,

Rob

While it may appear to be competing with high-end Netbooks, there’s actually no comparison. The AMD Fusion processor blows the latest Intel Atoms out of the water.  The snappy performance leads you to believe you’ve got a Core i3 under the hood, but the 5+ hours of battery life reminds you that this is something different.  This laptop has the fit and finish that you would expect from a $3,000 ThinkPad.  It’s super-sturdy and comes with an unparalleled scalloped / chiclet keyboard that feels like you’re typing on a Selectric typewriter.  This thing is absolutely tiny and only weighs around 3 lbs with the 6 cell battery, so I don’t feel it in my backpack when I running through airports.

I’ve been using Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, IE9 (with 8 tabs open), Tweetdeck, Visio, Live Writer, Chrome, and Lync without issue.  In fact, they were all very responsive.  HD videos were great.  Since I also write software, I installed Visual Studio 2010, plus the Windows Phone 7 tools and emulator.  This is where things ran out of gas.  I totally get that Visual Studio is a giant piece of software, but the x120 just wasn’t up to the task when it came to fast compiles and having a responsive IDE.  Running Windows Phone 7 apps in the emulator was also a very sluggish experience.  Yes, all the tools worked as expected, but you might lose patience.

To be fair, this tiny laptop was not designed to be a developer workstation but I thought I’d see how far I could push it.  Actually, it might be possible to make the x120e fast enough for giant tools like Visual Studio and Eclipse by bumping up the DDR3 RAM to 8 GB and swapping out the spinning hard disk with a fast SSD.  I’ll probably give it a try.

To sum up, the ThinkPad x120e is a pocket rocket of a business productivity and I highly recommend it.

-Rob

The Windows Phone SDK includes the following components:

• Windows Phone SDK 7.1 (Beta2)
• Windows Phone Emulator (Beta2)
• Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Assemblies (Beta2)
• Silverlight 4 SDK and DRT
• Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Extensions for XNA Game Studio 4.0
• Microsoft Expression Blend SDK Preview for Windows Phone 7.1
• WCF Data Services Client for Window Phone 7.1
• Microsoft Advertising SDK for Windows Phone 7

Beyond developing apps and games with Silverlight and XNA, take advantage of the new emulator to view and test your new HTML5 websites.

-Rob

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/a15c3ce9-f58f-42b7-8668-53f6cdc2cd83?SRC=Home

Best Regards,

Rob

1. Multiple mobile applications
2. Multiple mobile operating systems
3. Multiple backend systems maximizing ROI vs. tactical solutions

It’s already a $1 Billion business and 95% of orgs will choose MEAP over point solutions by 2012.   The picture below represents some of our familiar cloud and on-premise servers on top and a wide spectrum of mobile devices from Microsoft and other manufacturers on the bottom: 

Let’s do a quick rundown of Gartner’s Critical Capability list so you can see how we rise to their challenge:

1. Integrated Development Environment for composing server and client-side logic: Microsoft Visual Studio supports on-premise and cloud server development and targets clients such as Windows, Windows Phone 7, Windows Mobile, the Web, Nokia S60, and the Macintosh. 
2. Application Client Runtime: Various flavors of Microsoft .NET (Silverlight, .NET, Compact Framework) run on Azure, Windows Server, Windows, the Mac, Windows Phone 7, Windows Mobile, and Nokia S60.  Guess what, you can use MonoTouch to take your .NET skills to the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.  MonoDroid is in the preview stage and will bring .NET to Android phones and tablets in the future.
3. Enterprise Application Integration Tools: Connecting mobile devices to a variety of backend packages like Dynamics or SAP is critical.  Microsoft supports this integration in the cloud via Windows Azure AppFabric and on-premise though SQL Server Integration Services and dozens of adapters.  Tools like our Business Intelligence Dev Studio make EAI a repeatable, drag and drop exercise.
4. Packaged Mobile Apps: Microsoft delivers the Office suite across Windows, Windows Phone 7, Windows Mobile, the Web and the Mac.  Office will be coming to Nokia in the future and One Note just arrived on iOS.
5. Multichannel Servers: Windows Server + SQL Server on-premise and Windows Azure + SQL Azure in the cloud represents Microsoft’s mobile middleware platforms.  Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) delivers cross-platform SOAP & REST Web Services and cross-platform wire protocols like XML, JSON and OData.
6. Software Distribution: Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager supports pushing software out to Windows and Windows Mobile.  Windows Phone 7 has Marketplace for this function.
7. Security: Data-in-transit is secured by SSL across all platforms.  Data-at-Rest security for apps is facilitated on Windows by BitLocker, Windows Mobile through encryption policies and Windows Phone 7 through AESManaged in Silverlight.  Cross-platform auth is facilitated by Microsoft Windows Identity Foundation so devices can access resources via a Windows Live ID, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, ADFS and others.
8. Hosting: It goes without saying the Microsoft knocks the hosting requirement out of the park with Azure.

So what do I want you to take away from all this?

Microsoft has a great MEAP stack comprised of servers and skillsets you probably already have at your company.  You get maximum reuse on our servers and in our cloud which means you save money when it’s time to build and deploy your second, third and fourth mobile app without new training, new servers, and different technologies each time.  I hope you’re pleasantly surprised to see that our .NET application runtime lives on so many mobile platforms.  Again, this means that your existing .NET skills can be reused on Microsoft devices, the Web, Mac, Nokia and even the iPad.  Who knew?  I’m looking forward to bring Android into the .NET camp as well. 

It’s a brave new world of disparate devices connected to the cloud.  Companies have no choice but to target most all of them when constructing B2C apps to sell products or bring in new customers.  They’ve also found that this is the case in supporting their own employees and business partners with B2E and B2B apps.  No single company has so many different skillsets and competencies to pull this off.

There is one thing that most companies do have though.  A Microsoft infrastructure in their data center or the cloud, Windows on desktops, laptops and tablets, plus teams of .NET developers.  As I’ve just shown you, these .NET developers armed with Visual Studio or MonoTouch can be unleashed to allow you to reach almost every mobile platform.  This dramatically reduces the amount of extra Java and Eclipse skills that you’ll consider bringing in-house or outsourcing in order to target platforms like Android or the Blackberry.  Through the magic of WCF, all these platforms can connect to your critical Microsoft back-end resources and beyond.  You save money on training, use the servers you already have, resuse business logic and get to market faster.  No matter what platform you need to target, Microsoft and its partners want to help you reach your goals.

Looks like you’re already ahead of the game in taking on the Consumerization of IT.

-Rob

We’ve come a long way and you’re probably wondering what qualifies this new embedded database to take on the Internet:

• Native support for x64 Windows Servers
• Virtual memory usage has been optimized to ensure the database can support up to 256 open connections – (Are you actually using 256 pooled connections with your “Big” database today?)
• Supports databases up to 4 GB in size – (Feel free to implement your own data sharding scheme)
• Developed, stress-tested, and tuned to support ASP.NET web applications
• Avoids the interprocess communications performance hit by running in-process with your web application
• Row-level locking to boost concurrency
• Step up to Government + Military grade security SHA2 algorithm to secure data with FIPS compliance
• Enhanced data reliability via true atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability (ACID) support
• Transaction support to commit and roll back grouped changes
• Full referential integrity with cascading deletes and updates
• Support ADO.NET Entity Framework 4 – (Do I hear WCF Data Services?)
• Paging queries are supported via T-SQL syntax to only return the data you actually need

Wow, that’s quite a list!  SQL Server Compact 4.0 databases are easily developed using the new WebMatrix IDE or through Visual Studio 2010 SP1.  I’m loving the new ASP.NET Web Pages.  It reminds me of the good old days of building web applications with Classic ASP back in the 90′s with Visual InterDev and Homesite.

What about Mobility?

Since SQL Server Compact owes its heritage to mobile and embedded versions of Windows, you might be wanting to know what our story is there.  The good news is that you can build and deploy v4.0 databases on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.  If you want to implement an occasionally-connected solution that utilizes the Sync Framework, Remote Data Access (RDA), or Merge Replication, you’ll need to stick with SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP2.  Time and resource-constraints prevented the Compact team from enabling these features.  Luckily, single-user WPF/WinForms database applications running on Windows Slates, laptops and Windows Embedded Handheld devices will work just fine with the v3.5 SP2 runtime.  Get a jumpstart with this by pickup up “Enterprise Data Synchronization with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server Compact 3.5 Mobile Merge Replication” at   http://www.amazon.com/Enterprise-Synchronization-Microsoft-Compact-Replication/dp/0979891213/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1281715114&sr=1-1 to start building those MEAP solutions.

With the tidal wave of Windows Slates hitting the market, a secure, powerful mobile database that allows users to work offline and syncs with SQL Server is definitely going to be a hot item!

So run, don’t walk to the Microsoft Download site to download the Next-Gen database for the web:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=033cfb76-5382-44fb-bc7e-b3c8174832e2

If you need to support occasionally-connected mobile applications with sync capabilities on muliple Windows platforms, download SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP2:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=e497988a-c93a-404c-b161-3a0b323dce24

Keep Syncing,

Rob