Windows Phone 7's achilles heel --- no enterprise app deployment tool

Microsoft will be leaving an important enterprise deployment tool out of Windows Phone 7, forcing enterprises to use the public Windows Phone Marketplace to deploy their apps for employees. Microsoft is clearly betting on consumers rather than businesses for the phone's success, and that's a big gamble.

A report from Directions on Microsoft note about Windows Phone 7:

at launch it won't work with...System Center Configuration Manager, and corporate applications will have to be deployed through the Windows Phone Marketplace. IT departments should prepare to support Phone 7 as devices come into the enterprise but might not be able to standardize on them, especially if they rely on custom mobile applications.

Enterprises will have to figure out a way to use Windows Live IDs to restrict who can download their apps through the public Windows Phone Marketplace. The author of the report, Matt Rosoff, told The Register:

"Deploying apps through the Marketplace, and requiring employees to register with unique Windows Live IDs, is a pretty clunky workaround."

If all this is true, it means that Microsoft is betting the farm that Windows Phone 7 will be a big hit with consumers, and that it views the enterprise as only a secondary market. That's a very big gamble, especially considering that the enterprise is one of the few areas of strength for Microsoft mobile devices.

It's true, however, that there will be other significant tools for the enterprise with Windows Phone 7. Directions on Microsoft notes that Windows Phone 7:

will support Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), including features to manage phones from Exchange Server and will let users connect and work with documents on SharePoint 2010 servers using mobile versions of Office applications.

So it's not as if Microsoft is entirely giving up the enterprise. Still, launching without a simple way to deploy mobile apps enterprise wide is a serious problem.

Betting on consumers is risky, because the iPhone and Android operating systems are exceedingly popular, and it will be tough for Windows Phone 7 to gain traction against them. Making it harder still may be that Windows Phone 7 won't be able to multitask, and won't have copy-and-paste capabilities.

In itself, the lack of those two features wouldn't be a serious problem. But when you're trying to catch market leaders, you need to do everything they can and more. Windows Phone 7 will have some very nifty features that the iPhone and Android phones doen't have, which will help. But for consumers, every small feature is important, and the lack of multitasking in particular could be a serious problem.