Microsoft makes wireless case
Latest efforts put wireless support into enterprise servers.
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REDMOND, WASH. - Microsoft is taking a new approach to the mobile and wireless markets that observers say might finally result in the company getting it right.
The company is blending wireless and mobile support directly into its enterprise network software. That's a departure from its past efforts, and a twist on the current strategies of other vendors.
"Microsoft's strategy to embed wireless access in its basic products is a good one, but it is not really a trend among vendors," says James Kobielus, an analyst with Burton Group and a Network World columnist. "IBM, Sun, Oracle and others all provide wireless access with separate proxies and gateways."
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To be sure, Microsoft has had its struggles in the wireless market, from its early ineptitude with Windows CE to its breakup with its first platform partner, Wireless Knowledge. Even as recently as a year ago, Microsoft's mobile and wireless products were laggards and its strategy unorganized.
But with the multifaceted mobile and wireless market expected to boom - IDC estimates the worldwide market for mobile infrastructure software alone will more than quadruple from $352 million this year to $1.6 billion by 2006 - Microsoft wasn't about to give in. Observers say the company's persistence is about to start paying off.
"Microsoft is now becoming a force in the enterprise mobile market," says Warren Wilson, an analyst with Summit Strategies. "Microsoft has all the back-end pieces and now they are trying to tie together .Net, Exchange, SQL Server and the other software. And that will help them become a force in the handheld market."Microsoft won't say how much it's investing in wireless and mobile, but says its Mobility Group last year received the largest incremental capital outlay of any division.
Mobile and wireless technology also is a key underpinning of Microsoft's .Net strategy, which promises to deliver software as a set of services available from any device. Microsoft is spending $5 billion per year on .Net development.
"Today, if you look at wherever we mention the word Web and replace it with the word mobile, you get the idea of what we are doing," says David Rasmussen, lead product manager for the .Net mobile developer platform. "It's all about making mobility mainstream, making everything accessible. You can use exactly the same back end for everything from desktop to device."
Retooling the infrastructure
On the infrastructure side, Microsoft made a major strategy shift in February, committing to deconstruct its stand-alone mobile access server, Mobile Information Server 2002, and distribute its pieces among other back-end servers starting in early 2003.
Six months before, responsibility for MIS 2002, which provides secure access from wireless devices to Exchange e-mail and Windows-based applications, switched from the Mobility Group to the .Net Platform Group.
That group is putting MIS 2002's Outlook Mobile Access into Exchange Server and tucking the security and authentication gateway into Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA). The group also plans to integrate mobile security with Active Directory and ultimately Microsoft's Passport authentication service.
"Bringing wireless into the core Exchange functionality makes sense," says John Prince, core technology manager for connectivity at energy giant Conoco. "But we have some concerns about bringing the gateway into ISA because we don't think it has the robustness and throughput of a high-end firewall." But Prince says Microsoft is on the right track with its infrastructure changes. "The key is to build an application once and access it from anywhere."
To that end, Microsoft will build into the next version of SQL Server, code-named Yukon, mobile access to structured and unstructured data. That complements last year's release of SQL Server CE, which lets the database run on mobile devices and be synchronized wirelessly to the back end.
The Yukon technology also is the foundation for a new universal file system being built for Windows. And Microsoft's Content Management 2000 server already has mobile features built in.
On the management side, Microsoft says mobility will become an extension of existing server management, and mobile applications will be administered like Web applications are today. The next version of System Management Server, code-named Topaz, is getting mobile client features. The first beta-test version is due this month.
And this summer the company will release the .Net Compact Framework for Windows CE, a mobile version of the .Net Framework run-time environment, which lets Web service applications run atop the .Net platform.
To build those applications, Microsoft released in February its Mobile Internet Toolkit as part of Visual Studio.Net. Rival Sun is countering with its Java 2 Micro Edition and a new Mobile Edition of its Forte programming tools.
"When Microsoft moves upstream from providing wireless e-mail access to .Net they see a broader scope for content delivery," says Ken Dulaney, an analyst with Gartner.
He says Microsoft is exploiting XML in its infrastructure products and its ability to separate the business logic from the presentation of data. "The business logic does its thing and produces output in XML and the presentation layer takes the feed, recognizes the device making the request, and delivers the formatted data in real time or by store and forward."
Device changes
As Microsoft revamps its infrastructure, it is pushing hard to align its PDA and phone software and enlist its partners to sell the strategy.
In March, the company appointed 12-year Microsoft veteran Pieter Knook to head a new division that combines the former network service provider and mobile devices group.
He is charged with integrating Windows CE and CE .Net, Pocket PC 2002 and SmartPhone 2002 operating systems with the overall mobile strategy, and developing partnerships with service providers to push the technologies to end users over rivals such as PDA leader Palm and phone king Nokia.
According to Gartner, Palm has 60% of the handheld market, but only a third of that in the enterprise market. In contrast, Microsoft has 20% of the market, but 80% of that is enterprise sales. Palm is countering with messaging and database servers to complement its devices.
Microsoft faces a different challenge in the mobile phone market. In February, company officials said they want to have software on 100 million mobile phones in the next three to five years. But today, only Samsung, Mitsubishi and Sendo have committed to using it.
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