The Redmond, Washington company has also recruited system integrators the likes of HP Services, Accentrure, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and Synchrologic to come on board.

According to Microsoft, systems integrators will be offering customers a complete package of solutions, which will provide a single interface for multi-vendor solutions, simplify the out-of-the-box experience and reduce the complexity of implementing enterprise mobile solutions, including planning, deployment, security, and infrastructure.

This fall the initiative will offer Mobile Messaging that will include all the components necessary for a large-scale deployment of Windows Powered devices, such as PocketPCs and smartphones.

With Mobile Messaging, enterprises can expect the following:

• Deployment and provisioning: A streamlined deployment experience, especially with respect to device configuration.
• Systems management: Support for over-the-air and application management and application recovery.
• Security: Secure access to corporate networks via public Internet connections using PPTP and IPSec VPN clients.
• Windows Powered devices: To take advantage of the enterprise features packed into PocketPC and smartphone devices.
• Broad e-mail support: Support for Microsoft Exchange/Mobile Information Server and other cross-platform collaboration environments.

MobileInfo Advisory & Comments: Microsoft’s mobile workplace initiative is an excellent project implementation package to bring under one umbrella an end-to-end solution creation discipline. It will be a good multi-vendor resource pool for Microsoft-centric mobile solutions, especially for messaging applications. We would offer two caveats. One that this initiative will be more appropriate for e-mail and workgroup collaboration applications and less for transaction-based m-commerce applications. There are more pieces to the latter puzzle for which Microsoft still does not have all the answers. But it is putting its best foot forward in the messaging arena.