Will Nokia’s Windows Lumia Phone Enterprise Bet Pay Off ?

Nokia Enterprise Nokia claims many enterprises are already switching to Lumia Windows Phones. CEO Stephen Elop said, Coca-Cola sales associates in Vietnam and Cambodia will be using Nokia Lumia phones for order processing, equipment validation and market execution improvement.

Why Enterprises Switch to Nokia Windows Lumia ?
One of the advantages of the Nokia-Microsoft partnership is the close integrations of hardware and software. Nokia highlights the benefits of synergy between Nokia and Windows Phone 8, which enables easy sync with Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, Skype, Lync and Office 365, and Outlook using Windows Phone 8. According to Nokia, Windows provides secure access to corporate data and back-end systems.

The broad adoption of the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) protocol for managing and enforcing device permissions eases the task of security management of mobile devices. This near-universal adoption of EAS allows consistent policy definition and management for IT. Apple’s iOS 4.2 was the first major modern mobile OS to support EAS policies, and it helped catapult the iPhone to enterprise attention. Since then, Google has increased Android’s EAS coverage in each version, with Android 4 supporting more EAS policies than previous versions.

A critical addition in Windows Phone 8 is the support for encryption on the device (it is on by default for internal storage, but not for SD cards) and the related support for EAS encryption policies. The lack of support for encryption had historically been one of the biggest barriers to Windows Phone’s business acceptance in the past.

The delivery of mobile and corporate services has emerged as the most significant challenge for most enterprise IT departments since the advent of the Internet. Mobile devices can be carried and used almost everywhere, unlike PCs or even NBs. This creates an opportunity for developing applications which leverage these particular capabilities of mobile devices, benefiting employees, management and customers.

Mobility today will have much of an impact on businesses as the Internet did in the 1990s. Enterprises need to extend IT security beyond messaging, and corporate information access presents the biggest challenge and opportunity for vendors and operators.