First look: Microsoft's sharp, new Windows Phone SDK

Was it only six years ago that Windows Mobile was a big part of the cellphone business? That was a time when only programmers thought of a mobile phone as a computer.

Now we're heading into the second or third generation of the smartphone, and the little thin slabs are becoming even more complex than the desktop. Do you want to edit a document? Find your way home? Take a picture? Send email? Actually talk with someone? Your smartphone is there for you.

We've come a long way from Windows Mobile and BlackBerry. In the meantime, Microsoft looked into the abyss and realized it had no choice but to match the iPhone and Android mobiles feature for feature. The company spared no expense or effort in building something that offers more or less the same extensive list of features as iPhones or Android smartphones. Then Microsoft tacked on a few cool ideas and its own distinctive style that will lure those who love the mod, '60s look.

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This isn't just a challenge for the programmers inside Microsoft. The Windows Phone 8 platform can't become relevant on its own. A smartphone today needs apps from an app store, and an app store needs developers, and developers need SDKs. If Microsoft wants to ship phones, it will need programmers to work with the SDK and start creating apps.

Microsoft just released the Windows Phone 8 SDK last week. The first thing any programmer will notice is extensive breadth and the depth. It's not just a tool for putting some buttons on the screen. Today's developer must be ready to build a slick user interface that can work with the various roles of a smartphone.

Windows Phone 8 languages and runtime. The good news is the new version of the SDK includes extensive documentation written with plenty of detail for you to explore as you poke around all the different ways you can build a Windows Phone 8 app. There are hundreds of good examples, though even that might not be enough to cover everything we'll need to learn to work with the SDK. Microsoft thoughtfully includes a separate forum where programmers can write requests asking for new examples and vote for other people's requests. This is a smart feedback mechanism that should help Microsoft develop what the programmers really want to use.

Most of the examples are written in C#, the language that will probably be the first choice for many of the developers. The presentation layer filled with widgets is written in XAML, while the C# code lies bundled in objects waiting for the events to come its way. Microsoft calls this a "managed app." Most of your diddling will probably be choosing the right XAML layout widget so that everything looks just right. You can produce something quite nice by putting the right widgets in the XAML file and letting the OS manage the rest. The C# will pull data in and out of objects, then swap those objects with other parts of the code.

The free Windows Phone SDK 8.0 comes with Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows Phone (main editor shown), the Expression Blend UI design toolkit, Windows Phone 8 and Windows Phone 7.1 emulators, and plenty of templates to get you started.

C# is not the only choice; C++ and Visual Basic are options as well. Native, C++ apps will probably be the first pick for anyone building a game that requires zippy performance. That said, the arrival of the .Net Framework in Windows Phone 8 promises significant improvements in app performance and responsiveness, thanks to a new asynchronous programming model and a more efficient runtime engine. Microsoft claims Windows Phone 8 apps will launch faster too, since they'll be compiled in the Windows Store cloud instead of "just in time" on Windows Phone 7 devices, though I haven't experienced this.

A more interesting option than C#, Visual Basic, or C++ is the rise of JavaScript and HTML. Microsoft's documentation claims HTML isn't a full-fledged "app model," whatever that means, but also points out it's quite possible to plop a version of IE into a box in your app using XAML. Internet Explorer takes over and does the rest. Windows Phone 8 comes with IE10, which means that many of the new features of HTML5 are available.

I think JavaScript and HTML will be the form in which many of the early apps appear. It's quite simple to take an HTML5 app written in the likes of Sencha Touch or jQuery Mobile and port it to an iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone 8 device. The folks at Sencha, for instance, were given early access to the platform; I think Microsoft knows it's an easy way for people to create cross-platform apps. Tools like Apache Cordova are up-to-date and ready to turn the pile of JavaScript and HTML into a Windows Phone 8 app. Anyone who built a basic HTML5 app with Cordova should be able to port it in just a few minutes.

More than a dozen different coding templates come with the free version of Visual Studio you get with the SDK. If you're looking to create something that pulls data and displays it in a list, there's a template that's done much of the work for you. The IDE makes it pretty easy to pick up the SDK and get something running in the simulator. It should be noted that the simulator is much more responsive than many of the Android or BlackBerry devices around, though for some reason it doesn't accept text from my keyboard. It forced me to use the simulated phone's keyboard. Note too that you'll need to run Windows 8 on a SLAT-enabled CPU (such as Intel's Core I series) to make the simulator go.

Beyond the classic apps. Basic data-driven apps are just the first thing you'll see. Microsoft recognized that many smartphones are often more camera than phone today. I'm sure many people use Instagram or the photo-sharing features of Facebook more often than they talk and listen to the voices of their friends who actually ring them on the so-called phone. If you want to develop software that uses the camera on Windows Phone 8 devices, a big corner of the SDK is waiting for you.

Microsoft calls one class of apps a "lens." If you happen to write a lens, it becomes available in the built-in camera application. The user will pop up the camera and swap "lenses." A lens app is more a plug-in for the built-in camera than a stand-alone item.

I think this is a good feature for the user because it cuts down on the clutter. It also simplifies some of the work for the developer, but developers may feel like they're losing their identity in a demotion from full-fledged app to mere lens. The lens creator now has some user interface guidelines to follow. While this may lead to ego deflation, it makes the camera experience simpler and more consistent for the user.

The Windows Phone 8 emulator, which lets you test for devices at three screen sizes, offers a nice way to test the reaction to acceleration. Note, however, that it runs only on Windows 8 and modern hardware.

Some of the lenses will be devoted to nostalgic fiddling with the colors or changing the contrast until it looks like a picture from a disposable plastic camera made in 1974. But a Lens app can be much more than a color filter for postprocessing. You can add controls that will do anything you want to do with the image, including posting it to a website.

The camera is not the only part given special treatment. You can now write "VoIP apps" that integrate directly with the phone. Although Microsoft paid plenty of money for Skype, the company is ready to give any VoIP app first-class standing in the API. I'm not sure how this might upset the people who own the cell towers and pay for them by selling minutes. However, it's a forward-looking solution that recognizes there's more than one way for a mobile phone user to place that one telephone call they make each year on Mother's Day.

The tower owners might also take note of the Data Sense feature, a meter that tries to track how many bytes are going in and out of your phone. The good app developer can use the Data Sense API to check on usage and, perhaps, delay downloading that file until the user is connected via Wi-Fi. If the app developers pay attention -- and they should -- users will like the control this gives them over their monthly ration of cell bits.

App Store in Windows clothing. It's not all good news. Microsoft is following Apple down the road to programmer serfdom by adopting strict central control of the Windows Store app store, and early stories are mixed. Some developers are reporting the same kind of frustration that greeted developers at Apple's App Store. The economic model of apps sold at $1 or $2 can't support the lengthy code review that programmers need, so the app store turns into a black box where a bunch of overtaxed reviewers reject items with inscrutable messages.

The economics will take some time to work out. Microsoft is offering a steep discount for developers who want to start submitting apps; it's just $8 to join. The game for the company is to attract as much talent as possible to build a viable app store, though the move seems also to have annoyed a fair number of Windows Phone developers who recently paid $99 for the same privilege.

Despite these economic challenges, programmers with experience developing for Microsoft's platforms should be overjoyed by this SDK, especially those who are well-versed in XAML, C#, Visual Basic, or C++. Finally there's a good path to using that knowledge to create an app running on a thin tablet or a mobile phone.

The SDK, though, is more than just an opportunity to catch up with the iPhone or the Android world. Some parts of it offer new features such as lenses and VoIP apps that will create a unified world that's simpler and more harmonious for the user. This alone promises that Windows Phone phones will have some advantages -- if Microsoft can attract enough programmers and phone owners to nurture an ecosystem.

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New trend in BYOD security: contain the data, not the device

Over the past eighteen months, the conversation about mobile management has changed dramatically.

Where the primary goal used to be to secure and manage individual devices, the BYOD trend has made organizations of all sizes and types reconsider what mobile security means. The goal for many IT departments today isn't to lock down devices, but to securely deploy business apps so that users can safely work with business data anywhere at any time.

This new focus has led to a major new mobile security concepts known ascontainerization. Containerization refers to a solution that creates an encrypted data store or container on a device. Access to data in the container requires secure authentication independent of any other device settings or restriction. The result being that even on a device with no unlock passcode, no whole device encryption, and no security policies of any type, the contents of the container remain inaccessible unless an authorized user enters valid  credentials. Securing data in a container also allows IT to wipe all business data from a personal device without wiping any personal data or apps.

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That's a pretty attractive feature set for enterprises in itself and one that works well for organizations with BYOD programs, but containerization shouldn't stop at just encrypting business data.

To prevent data leaks, enterprises need to be able to manage the interaction between data in the secure container and the rest of a mobile device. That includes the ability to prevent unauthorized apps from opening business files stored in the container and the ability to disable copying and pasting between approved and unapproved apps. It can also mean disabling the ability of a device to print files that are stored in the container.

Early container tools were focused on securing specific data through a single enterprise app. Good Technology, one of the containerization pioneers, initially focused on providing a secure container for email, contacts, and calendar data. Good's approach in this area has been to offer an alternate enterprise app for access to corporate services like an Exchange server instead of using the stock apps included with iOS or Android. That approach works well in some respects, but it prevents users from interacting with enterprise data using the hundreds of thousands of apps available to them.

There are two solutions to that challenge.

The first is to develop a security framework that business and enterprise developers can integrate into their apps using a published SDK.

That allows developers to write apps that can securely access and store data in an encrypted container offered by a mobile management vendor. Good launched a program earlier this year known as Good Dynamics that takes this approach and other companies have followed suit, including Centrify, which recently launched its ownenterprise authentication system for mobile devices, and MobileIron, which announced a pair of new solutions called AppConnect and AppTunnel earlier this week.

Although this approach is effective, it requires developers to build apps in partnership with one or more vendors. That can present challenges. The most obvious is that an organization will need to integrate mobile management tools from a specific vendor into their mobile strategy in order to take full advantage of container-based security.

Another key challenge is that existing apps may have already been built and deployed throughout an organization. To build in container security, these would need to be updated or rewritten to take advantage of a vendor's container SDK. That can be challenging if enterprise apps were created by a contractor or employee that is no longer working with/for a company. For publicly available apps, there's also the challenge of getting a secure version of an app through the review process of Apple's App Store in addition to an existing version that doesn't use any third-party functionality like that offered by an enterprise vendor's SDK.

The second approach, which address some of these issues, is app wrapping.

App wrapping does exactly what its name implies: it adds an enterprise wrapper to an app that creates a secure container for it. Ideally, that wrapper can be centrally managed to secure the data, require authentication for access, and offer protection against data leaks by disabling copy/paste, printing, and the ability to open files in unapproved apps -- essentially it extends all the container advantages to almost any app including private enterprise apps and apps publicly distributed through Google Play.

Beyond building the secure container, a goal for many organizations is to have secured business apps be able to share information between them. After all, if you have an app for mobile ordering/billing as well as CRM, it makes sense that you'd want them to be able to share contacts and other key customer data.

There are, of course, different ways that apps can share data -- copying and pasting content, using the option to open a file using an alternate app, and through integration with back-end systems or cloud services. Depending on the data, the app, and the individual user, it may be prudent or necessary to limit what data sharing is available on in the same way that you would set file permissions on a network share or SharePoint site. Secure containers, and apps integrated with them, require granular and flexible rights management options.

The final challenge of containerization is ensuring that these processes are as invisible and frictionless to the end user as possible. In the age of personal cloud services and mobile apps, users will find ways to work around a solution that they feel is limiting, clunky, or just plain confusing. They don't want to enter a username and password for each business app or hunt for specific functionality inside of large or complex enterprise apps or navigate around restrictive limits.

Many companies have begun to address these issues, but MobileIron and Good seem to be doing the best job of offering containerization in an effective but minimally intrusive way.

MobileIron has done a phenomenal job in its new AppConnect product in designing a powerful solution that makes containerization almost completely transparent to the user. The company ticks all the security boxes -- enterprise authentication, single sign-on, authorization based on the user account as well as the device and installed apps, and it offers flexible policies. Despite the container approach and app wrapping, users have virtually the same experience under AppConnect as on an unmanaged device. The companion AppTunnel solution also offers secure connections from secured apps to a corporate network without the use of a resource-heavy VPN infrastructure.

Good has also done an amazing job on this front as well with its Good Dynamics platform and its recent acquisition of AppCentral, which allows it to provide app wrapping as well as an SDK option to its customers. Good's overall on-device presence isn't as transparent to users as MobileIron's AppConnect, but it is still pretty user friendly and packs the security needed by most enterprises.

As I mentioned, Centrify has also recently stepped into this arena with its own Mobile Authentication Services (MAS) SDK that focuses on single sign-on and mobile authentication. The MAS SDK is available through a freemium model and focuses on securing mobile access to enterprise data systems and cloud services.

As mobile app management (MAM) becomes a companion to, and to some extent displaces, device management as the IT mantra for mobile management, we'll see a lot more evolution of the secure container -- and most likely a number of additional mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships to deliver the best container options. Overall, containerization looks almost certain to be one of the key mobile security technologies for a long time to come.

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Microsoft Office for iOS and Android: Too little, too late

Microsoft will release Office for Android and iOS devices early next year, The Verge is reporting, lending more weight to rumors that have been circulating since early this year.

According to the report, the app will be free for viewing, but editing will only be supported for people with Office 365 subscriptions. Users will need to sign in with a Microsoft account to use the free app, whether they have an Office 365 subscription or not.

If this report is true, Microsoft's version of Office for these platforms won't have much to set it apart from other apps that do the same thing. (Microsoft has not confirmed the existence of the app or the timing, saying only that it will support Office across platforms.)

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There are already many options for viewing and editing Office documents on the go. My Motorola Atrix 4G came with Quickoffice, which lets me view and edit Word, Powerpoint, and Excel documents. I can save my edited versions to Dropbox, Box, SugarSync, and other online services (although not Skydrive, as Quickoffice is owned by Google.).

Different pro versions of Quickoffice cost $15 to $20 for Android and iOS devices.  Apple's iWork, Smart Office, and others offer additional options for viewing and editing Office documents on mobile devices.

Offering Office apps on competing mobile platforms will represent a shift for Microsoft. Back when Windows Mobile had decent market share, it appeared that the company’s strategy was to try to convince mobile workers to use Windows Mobile as the only way to get a mobile Office app from Microsoft. But with the transition to Windows Phone, Microsoft’s mobile market share has plummeted and the company must see that mobile Office isn’t going to draw people to its mobile phone platform.

In addition, the advent of Office 365 means that Microsoft can now more elegantly offer the mobile app to paying Office customers. Office 365 users have a user name and password that they can use to sign in to the mobile app. Prior to Office 365, there hasn’t been a simple way to tie the mobile and desktop versions of Office together.

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How one financial services CTO got users to share info more securely

Investment firm Blackstone was so impressed with document security vendor Watchdox, it took a small stake in the startup in March to make sure it would thrive.

But CTO Bill Murphy knew he couldn't force a new tool onto employees in the name of security.

"We could have gone top down, but that breeds resentment," Murphy told CITEworld. Instead, he positioned Watchdox as a convenience – it allowed users to share information without violating the company's strict compliance policies.

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"We had policies like you can't send confidential information outside the four walls, you can't access a Gmail account, and so on. What we said is, 'Here's the policy, now here's a tool that makes it possible not to violate policy. It gives you more freedom and makes things easier for you.' You catch more flies with honey than with a flyswatter – that's very key."

The end result?

"A lot of people have no idea Watchdox is more secure than other systems. They just think it's more convenient than other solutions we have right now."

Blackstone first used Watchdox more than a year ago to solve a very specific problem: communicating transparently with its limited partners (outside investors) about the companies it was investing in. But those communications also had to be absolutely secure – a leak would have huge competitive and legal ramifications.

So it created a web portal for these limited partners, then built Watchdox into a custom app the partners used to access these documents. Eventually, Blackstone decided Watchdox would be a great tool for confidential internal communications as well, like financial projections and results. Later, they started using it for conferences as well, saving a lot of money on printing costs.

"We've now rolled it out to over half the organization," Murphy told us. "

Murphy believes Watchdox is more secure than services like Dropbox or Box because it embeds permissions in the files themselves, so no matter where they end up, Blackstone retains control over who can access them and exactly what those users can do, such as editing, forwarding the file via email, or copying text into another file. Blackstone can also revoke access in case a relationship changes – like a customer moves to a different firm, or an employee gets fired.

"We're confident that even if I downloaded every Watchdox document to my iPad, if I left the firm tomorrow, there's no chance I could access those documents."

There's always a trade-off between security and usability, so using Watchdox isn't as simple  as using a totally unprotected file-sharing service like Dropbox. For instance, a user's device has to access a remote server for authentication the first time a protected file is opened, and periodically after that to check for revocation. On mobile devices, files have to be viewed in a Flash application in a mobile browser or, in the case of iOS (which doesn't support Flash), in a Watchdox viewer app.

Even so, Watchdox is a lot more convenient than what Blackstone employees were doing before – sending confidential files back and forth as email attachments.

"With Watchdox I have my documents organized in folders," says Murphy. "I have 40 different workspaces, can just drill into them whenever I want."

Murphy acknowledges that other vendors like Box are moving toward better security with features like watermarking.

But, he says, "Watchdox was born out of guys who focused on security first, usability second. My view is it's a little easier to build a company from restrictive to less restrictive, rather than open to restrictive. The DNA of the place gives me confidence."

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Android surpasses Windows as the world goes mobile

For those who doubted that there’s a major shift happening in the way people get online for work or play, a few reports out this week should convince them that there’s no turning back now.

Mary Meeker presented some research earlier this week that should have Microsoft sweating. According to TechCrunch, she said that in the first quarter this year more Internet-enabled Android devices shipped than Internet-enabled Windows devices. By the end of next year, she expects quarterly shipments of 160 million Android devices, 100 million Windows devices, and 80 million iOS devices.

In fact, Meeker said, that by the second quarter next year she thinks that globally, theinstalled base of smartphones and tablets combined will surpass that of PCs.

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Those numbers are a stark portrayal of the change in the way that people get online. Instead of doing the bulk of work sitting in front of a Windows machine behind a desk, people are getting online from their phones and tablets often while mobile. With Android now outselling the second-most popular smartphone platform, iOS, by a ratio of five-to-one, that means most of these new devices are running Android.

Smartphones and tablets aren’t replacing PCs. But as if to support Meeker’s research, Informa Telecoms put out a report showing that for the first time more smartphones connect to hotspots than laptops. It was a squeaker: Informa found that 40 percent of all hotspot connections are made by smartphones, 39 percent by laptops, and 17 percent by tablets.

So not only are people straying from their desks, they’re straying from their Windows-powered laptops to use phones and tablets to get online.

All of these reports should worry Microsoft, which is only just now getting into the tablet business in earnest, and which has struggled to gain market acceptance for its Windows Phone smartphone platform. IDC reported this week that tablet shipments worldwide in the third quarter were 27.8 million, a nearly 50 percent growth over the same quarter last year.

There are outliers who still cling to the old model, or a form of it, but they have good reason to. IDG News Service reported this week that Lenovo’s CEO said he expects people will lose interest in tablets in favor of convertible laptops. With Lenovo’s recent introduction of the Yoga, a Windows 8 laptop with a screen that folds all the way back so the machine can be used like a tablet, he would say that.

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Evernote gets streamlined with a big makeover

Evernote, the gold standard in web clipping and note-taking tools, just got a huge iOS facelift—and it makes the Evernote app even more useful for busy professionals who use the tool to catalogue information and share it.

The first change you’ll notice is that the entire user interface has been streamlined. When I fired up the app, I found a completely redesigned home screen. Now, all your information is organized in a series of Views tabs with a separate Quick Notes bar sharing the main screen. The Views tabs can be expanded with a single finger swipe to display your notes in a variety of ways, including by tags, notebooks, or places. The Quick Notes panel is an especially welcome addition for veteran Evernote users: it allows you to create a new note, take a snapshot, or turn physical notes into digital ones using a document capture function—and you can do all of that with one tap of the screen. That’s a huge asset. Creating notes now takes as little time as sorting them does.

The new format works beautifully: simply swipe a Views tab upwards and the screen expands to display your chosen view. Swipe down to return to the main menu. There’s a lot here to like. In the Notebooks view, you can see all of your notebooks on one page, as well as bundle notebooks together into stacks. On the All Notes tab, the thumbnails for each note are clear and crisp, making sorting through all your notes incredibly easy. You can also one-tap create a new note from this menu, which is another nice touch.

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Using the Evernote app for iPad, you’ll also gain access to a Recent Notes menu on the main dashboard that displays your most recent clippings. It’s a great addition for the tablet’s bigger screen.

While Evernote updates its tool pretty frequently, this latest iOS redesign is major. As a long time Evernote user, I found the entire experience of creating and organizing notes to be redefined. The tool has always been slick, but now it feels seamless. That’s largely due to the new interface: being able to take full advantage of all Evernote features using only two screens is an inspired design decision.  Also, the one-tap document capture function, new note button, and snapshot feature all add incredible value.

In short, this is one of the smartest redesigns I’ve ever seen in a mobile app—and it makes Evernote even more indispensible. 

Want to try the new Evernote iOS app? Get it here. 

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Happy that you can use your iPhone at work? Thank Microsoft

Perhaps no company has been threatened by consumerization like Microsoft, as first smartphones and then tablets running non-Windows operating systems have slowly taken their place in enterprises alongside the Windows PC.

Ironically, Microsoft helped open the door to these devices. 

Consumerization has been around since the dawn of the PC era, but the latest wave started in 2007 when new iPhone users began bringing their devices to work and asking IT departments to let them connect to email. 

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For a lot of IT shops, that was a no-go, as one lost iPhone would give an outsider access to company email. If pressed -- say, if the CEO insisted on being able to read email on his new gadget -- IT would eventually allow devices to connect to email, but would restrict access to other internal resources.

As Galen Gruman at InfoWorld points out, that began to change with iOS 4.0 in 2010, which included support for Microsoft's Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) protocols. Those protocols allowed Exchange shops to set security parameters on employees' iPhones, such as forcing them to enter a password of a certain length and complexity, and gave them the ability to wipe lost phones. With those security controls in place, IT became much more accepting of letting employees access all kinds of internal resources. Google eventually followed Apple and started adding EAS support to Android.

EAS was the crack in the dam that opened the way for the iPhone, Android phones, and the iPad, to take their place alongside Windows PCs in enterprises as real work tools.

So why did Microsoft decide to license EAS in the first place? Why not keep it as a proprietary feature for its own mobile platforms?

Analyst Rob Sanfilippo from Directions on Microsoft speculates, "At that time, selling Exchange (and Windows Server) was a clear priority over dominating the device market, so Microsoft likely saw EAS licensing as a way to promote Exchange and incur some licensing revenue. This strategy probably wasn’t questioned even as iPhone was released, and Apple licensed EAS before iPhones and iOS became all the craze."

The first company to take an EAS license was PalmOne, maker of the then-popular Palm Treo smartphone, which ran PalmOS. That happened in October 2004.

At that time, Exchange Server was already a billion dollar annual business for Microsoft. Windows Mobile was nowhere close.

A month later, Motorola took a license so its A780 feature phones, which were based on Linux and Java. (Foreshadowings of Android.) Several other smartphone makers followed, with Apple taking its fateful license in March 2008.

Licensing EAS also coincided with a broader move toward more openness and interoperability across Microsoft. Microsoft began a formal intellectual property licensing program in 2003 and dramatically expanded it with an interoperability pledge in February 2008. Regulators may have helped spur Microsoft in that direction -- particularly the EU, which in January 2008 expressed concern that Microsoft was not revealing enough interoperability information about its products. (That investigation was later settled.)

Whatever the reason, when Microsoft looks at why iOS has become such a force in the enterprise, it has to spend at least a little time looking in the mirror.

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