Do you remember the old days when it cost money to setup and keep an email account? Do you still pay for the privilege of being able to send email? Now I realize that in the bigger picture neither Hotmail or Gmail are “free”, but the up-front cost is zero dollars. Sure you have email services like Exchange Online Services where you pay for your email, but if you are paying for these services just for the email part of it you probably missed out on something. You pay for services like this because they offer something more than basic email. You get contacts, calendar, etc. You get ActiveSync access. Even BlackBerry access. That’s why you are willing to pay – it offers something more than the basic free services. (Yes, I know I can do some of these things on Gmail as well without going for a full-blown hosted Exchange account.) And whereas you usually had to configure Outlook Express or some similar app, (at least outside business use), you could only connect to the SMTP of your ISP, and the mail was only accessible on that particular computer, you can now send and receive mail online regardless of which computer you are using and which ISP you’re connected through. (We are indeed moving forwards aren’t we.)

Now, I majored in software engineering, so someone majoring in economics/marketing could probably explain this in a better way than me. But this is basically what we call commoditization. Choosing Hotmail or Gmail for basic mail does not matter. The SMTP traffic looks pretty much the same in both instances, and if one of them started charging money for the basic service you’d switch to the other. Once a technology has moved past the early adopters, and are approaching the late majority, it will eventually become a commodity. When a product is a commodity the basic product is not bound to a specific provider, and you basically (pun intended) need to distinguish yourself from “the pack” and offer a premium product to have any profit margins to speak of.

Ok, fair enough. How does this relate to mobility? Well, PIM has pretty much gone that way. Even your most primitive mobile device will support email/contacts/calendar in some way. Possibly only through cradling to a desktop. Possibly only POP3/IMAP support. But on so-called smartphone devices you’ve come to expect being able to sync to Exchange. With both Lotus/IBM and Novell adding ActiveSync to their groupware products you except it to “just work” and not require all sorts of third-party apps that cost money. It’s basically a commodity by now. (If your primary business is selling PIM-related apps and middleware you have to offer something extra than basic PIM to survive.)

MDM has so far not been commoditized. While Mobile Device Management certainly is getting easier and more accessible you still have to pay up money if you want to be able to do anything proper, and you’re not in the position where you can expect everything to work on all platforms and devices. I do believe however that we are getting closer a few steps by the time (Pop quiz: is this a good or a bad thing?)

And I believe Microsoft is thinking along those lines too. How so, you say? Well, I obviously do not have access to the entire mobility strategy of Microsoft, or their roadmap, but I noticed a curious thing after the Windows Mobile 6.5 launch two days back. They also released an upgrade to, and RTMed, the MyPhone service. On my main device, (a Touch Diamond 2 for the time being), I’ve been running it since I loaded up a 6.5 ROM on it a few weeks ago. Since I use Exchange ActiveSync it’s mainly for backing up SMS, and syncing the few pictures I snap. Works like a charm.

MyPhone has new features in this release. It’s got a remote kill function. And if you have forgotten where you misplaced your device you can have Microsofts servers “pinging” it and it will ring for 60 seconds regardless of whether the device is in silent mode or not. Surely a step in the direction of enabling MDM light for your average user. (Although pitched primarily as a sync solution so far, the MyPhone name is generic enough for further expansion later.) If you allow it, it will even track the location of your device, presumably through GPS or A-GPS logs.

But what really made me notice that something was going on was a bug that has been bothering me. The Power-on-Password screen in WM 6.5 displays the time and next calendar appointment without unlocking. But due to my ROM not being RTM there’s been an annoying bug displaying the time as “00:00” all the time – so I have to authenticate to use the device as a watch. MyPhone forced a soft reset of the device after upgrading itself, and in addition to changing something with the font the time was now displaying properly! Bug fixed! But the shell protection is part of the OS isn’t it?

If you will indulge me for a few more minutes. (Already ranting, but there’s ample time for a digression I guess. You are free to move along if you like.) The module in Windows Mobile that is responsible for making things like Power-on-Password work is called the LASS (Local Authentication Subsystem). The LASS itself does not handle the actual authentication – this is handled by a LAP (Local Authentication Plugin). If you want the low-level details MSDN is waiting for you: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa923670.aspx

The high-level brief is that Windows Mobile by default includes a LAP that will let you authenticate with a password/PIN. (SIM card authentication is handled by the radio stack as far as I know.) But Microsoft has provided the opportunity for people to write their own custom authentication modules. For instance when I run Afaria (a Sybase product) on a device I often include the Data Security Manager module that replaces the built-in LAP.

You can have a look a which LAPs you have on your device, and which is the currently active LAP by taking a look at the registry.
HKLM\Comm\Security\LASSD\LAP will have subkeys for each LAP, and the key “ActiveLap” will tell you which one is active.
The default LAP is called lap_pw, and after installing MyPhone you have a new one called lap_sky. It didn’t change the active LAP on my device, but apparently it’s updating some other files too in the process. By changing the ActiveLap key manually in the registry I can switch the interfaces though. (Still works with the same password as before.)

Lap_pw:

Lap_sky:

The plot thickens. Without trying to sound conspiratorial I must say “sky” sounds an awful lot like “cloud”. And if it wasn’t enough calling the LAP “sky”, MyPhone also installs a file called SkyCommandListener.dll Yes, I understand that since the remote wipe feature is included, and you can control this from the MyPhone interface in your browser it doesn’t qualify as discovering any secrets – there obviously had to be something device-side executing these remote instructions. Looking at it from an end-user perspective I can only say this is nice though. It indicates Microsoft are able to implement more MDM features at a later time if they want to. Initially these features are free, but some of them will be “premium” features later on.

They will probably try to tie it in with the Windows Mobile MarketPlace offering at a later time too. While you can only install apps on the device for know, there is a planned upgrade that will let you buy apps in your desktop browser. And I don’t see why a remote install wouldn’t be possible in the same go.

How it will tie in with enterprise offerings, whether from Microsoft or third-parties, remain to be seen.

Oh, and the pop quiz? It does kind of depend on where you are standing I guess. (Who would have expected that answer, eh?) But only dead fish follow the stream