Microsoft Presses Enterprise Mobile Into Service
Here's an example of why Microsoft's so smart.
Most people realize the company's whole mobile effort -- Windows CE, Windows Mobile, etc. -- hasn't exactly hit the cover off the ball. And they've been at it for quite a while.
So what do they do? Some emissary -- in this case word is it was Steve Ballmer himself -- goes to his old buddy/nemesis (frenemy?) Mort Rosenthal, formerly of Corporate Software, once Microsoft's largest large account resellers who has since reverted to entrepreneurdom.
With some Microsoft money, Mort founded Enterprise Mobile to bridge the Microsoft desktop-to-cell-phone gap. Rosenthal had been involved in another mobile-focused startup.
Microsoft, for all its claims to the contrary, knows its mobile push hasn't pried Blackberries out of many hands, and wants a way to leverage (ugh, that word again) its desktop monopoly...er, dominance, in phone land.
If there's anything most workers know, it's Word, or Excel or Outlook. If they're a field person, they would very much like to connect back to their mothership files and spreadsheets.
Here's an account of Enterprise Mobile's coming out party.
The lesson here is if you have a technology/platform that no one's developing for, fund yourself a startup that will do the development for you, and perhaps jumpstart demand.
--Barbara Darrow is industry editor for Redmond Magazine, Redmond Channel Partner, and Redmond Developer News. She can be reached at [email protected].
Posted by Barbara Darrow on 11/30/2007