Next year is already shaping up to be a big one for Redmond’s Windows Phone platform. While Update 3 lays a lot of the groundwork, Windows Phone 8.1 is ready to take things up several notches in 2014.
But Microsoft also looks set to beef up the enterprise side of things on its mobile OS.
BlackBerry seems pretty much down for the count, and with the famed Canadian maker of handsets on the ropes, this opens up quite an opportunity for Microsoft to come barging right in — right into the enterprise domain, obviously.
Businesses and enterprise users that lived by BlackBerry are now looking at alternative solutions, and Windows Phone 8 is as strong a contender as any in terms of an overall speed, stability and security.
The only thing facet that it has not yet covered nearly as well is enterprise — features like VPN, static IP support, S/MIME encrypted email, SSTP, and a certificate manager are missing.
But Microsoft’s Erwin Visser confirmed at the Nokia World 2013 event in Abu Dhabi earlier today that the Enterprise Feature Pack for Windows Phone is on track for release sometime in the first half of 2014.
Additionally, two of the most popular business applications, GoToMeeting and Cisco WebEx, are set to hit the Windows Phone Store — though no concrete release dates have been announced.
And that’s not all. Microsoft has also announced that it will extend support for Windows Phone from 18 months to 36 months for business and enterprise users.
These are all things that show that Redmond wants its mobile platform to be used by both end users (in various spectrums of the market) and businesses and enterprises. Big things are promised, and fingers crossed all of them see daylight next year.
