This was the announcement of greater investment in the development of Windows Phone enterprise capabilities to make the mobile operating system an even better choice for businesses of all sizes. The announcement was made in a blog post from Tony Mestres, Vice President of Windows Phone Partner and Channel Marketing.
With business customers front of mind, the length of the support lifecycle for Windows Phone will be increased from 18 months to 36 months. Beginning with Windows Phone 8, we’ll make updates, including security updates, available for 36 months. These will be incremental, with each one built on the update that preceded it. In addition to the longer support lifecycle, we will also be releasing an enterprise feature pack as an update to Windows Phone 8. This feature pack will provide IT departments with more control over Windows Phones and give their employees a more complete productivity experience. We plan to provide the feature pack as an update in the first half of 2014.
The enterprise feature pack will include:
- S/MIME to sign and encrypt email
- Access to corporate resources behind the firewall with app aware, auto-triggered VPN
- Enterprise Wi-Fi support with EAP-TLS
- Enhanced MDM policies to lock down functionality on the phone for more enterprise control, in addition to richer application management such as allowing or denying installation of certain apps
- Certificate management to enroll, update, and revoke certificates for user authentication
Extending the Windows Phone support lifecycle policy and announcing the enterprise feature pack demonstrates our commitment to the Windows Phone platform and the increasing number of features designed specifically for businesses. The platform is evolving to be an even better choice for business.
