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Mobile operators "getting more MS-friendly" - as Gates woos enterprises

This isn't the first time Microsoft has decided to mobilise business. It failed, first time around. The original plan was to cosy up to the big Vodafones and Cellnets and T-Mobiles, and get them to adopt Microsoft back office technology, and they refused. So now, the Gates Mobile Empire is going for the market from the other end - with partners who sell solutions.

It's called the "Microsoft Mobile Workplace" and the man who will be selling the concept to European corporates over the next year, starting today, is Peter Wissinger, who is marketing manager for the Mobile Workplace for EMEA region.

"We started out trying to launch enterprise messaging - by enabling Exchange - with the big carrier people like Vodafone, mmo2 and so on," Wissinger told NewsWireless Net today. "We saw synchronisation as the way forward. But we didn't have the devices, two years ago, so mobile data ended up being a WAP browse scenario launched by operators."

Today, he insists, relationships between Microsoft and the operators are much improved. His boss, Robbie Ray Wright, director of the Mobile Devices marketing group for EMEA, says the challenge facing corporates today, is "bringing multiple vendors and technologies together, to wirelessly extend business functions." Wissinger (naturally!) agrees.

"The operators are not really equipped with the skills of selling an enterprise solution," reckons Wissinger. "They have to work with the larger systems integrators - people like CAP Gemini, Accenture and so on. They are starting to understand that this is something that takes time. We think our project is a good deal for them - plug and play."

It would be pretty easy to decry this initiative as "just another way to sell Exchange," and Wissinger doesn't deny that Exchange and Titanium (the next version of Exchange, due out next year) are key parts of the Mobile Workplace strategy. "Longer term, Titanium is very strategic to us. End to end solutions are part, but not all of what this initiative is. We are also opening up ways of targeting other back ends like SAP - we have a software partner who can do that."

Partners, he says, are the real key. "We're looking at hosted services, too, for the SME market; but the key to this is that we have a partner who can solve the problem. We have some partners already, and some solutions; and we'll be looking to expand. But the market won't grow if it's just messaging; it has to be line-of-business work that becomes mobile-enabled."

Two years ago, he admits, the operators didn't seem to trust Microsoft. "Also, we simply didn't have the devices; there was no Tablet PC, no SmartPhone, no PocketPC Phone edition. Today, we do, and now, we have credibility in the enterprise space - or, where we don't, we have a partner who has the credibility."

The Mobile Workplace was originally announced in America in July, and the roll-out here at the Copenhagen Conference Centre during IT Forum is neatly timed when American eyes are focused on Comdex, and European eyes are ... also focused on Comdex. How keen is Microsoft, really, to be noticed? Wissinger concedes that there isn't going to be that much hype.

"We're launching now, with some partners, some solutions. Now we get into the institution phase; marketing these solutions, building up the pipeline, and moving into the sales process. We have some wins already; the next three months, you will see that increasing in scope. So if you ask me again at the 3GSM World Congress, I'd like hope I will be able to come to you and say 'we have ten more wins in these countries'."