Microsoft is planning to announce some greatly beefed-up remote Windows phone management capabilities for mobiles when it goes ahead with introducing the System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 software.
The new software will itself allow administrators to secure remotely and also manage different mobile phones in as much the same fashion as they manage their PCs, laptops etc. This was announced by John O’Rourke the general manager, Microsoft mobile communications arm.
CEO Steve Ballmer has planned to make this announcement during his opening speech at CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment conference which is to be held in San Francisco.
This software will enable IT administrators who use Mobile Device Manager, to remotely do many things like turning off a mobile phone’s camera, preventing unauthorized use of messaging services etc. It is important for mobile phone companies who have to comply with different regulations requiring these companies to record all information sent from certain employee devices, as was informed by Rourke.
The Mobile Device Manager software integrates and works in tandem with Microsoft System Center which enables administrators using that software to use existing directory & group policy advantages to help disseminate policies. An organization which may already have a set of policies for a group that contains field salespeople, so an administrator can choose to set mobile policies for that same group, pushing out changes to all of their Windows Mobile phones at once.
This software also enables support and secure accessibility to many corporate information sites through connections using VPN. This allows Windows enabled phone users who can now directly access their files that might be behind a corporate firewall. The software also helps them use their existing Web-based applications which reside on the company’s corporate intranet.
Windows Mobile 6.0 offers many remote management uses… An IT administrator is able to remotely format a Windows Mobile cell phone in case it is stolen and can also remotely manage different passwords in use with the device device, without the use of Mobile Device Manager.
