WITH many different kinds of smartphones in the market – it becomes an IT manager’s nightmare to support all of them. It started with some Nokias and Blackberry offering email on their device. This was the time when there was Blackberry connect for Nokia and users could get their Blackberry email on Nokia’s business phones like the 9300 or 9500.

This is the time when Nokia decided to leave the Blackberry banner and chose to have its own mail offering. They obviously thought they were better. How well has it fared? After about four years of its launch, the Nokia offering is finally getting some traction on their E-series phones – just that it is still far from being a preferred platform.

That, was still not too difficult for the IT department back then. The only thing that they had to do was set up Blackberry servers in some cases. That was nothing in comparison to what was in store for them.

During the time Nokia and Blackberry were fighting it out – there came the iPhone and changed the game again. With a better user experience and going forward, an integration with Outlook, it has catapulted into being one of the most preferred platforms.

This also brought a cultural shift where employees started demanding support from the device at work. Till this time the employees did not care too much about the device they had – nor were there any compelling consumer devices that gave them the option of doing their work efficiently. The iPhone changed things from ground up.

Now, not only did the IT department had to support the phone, but they had to increase security on their networks to ensure that the apps and the internet usage from the device did not cause havoc on their network. Usage policies had to be drawn for application and phone usage on office networks and for office emails.

By this time they were supporting three major formats – Symbian, Blackberry and the iPhone. They were already supporting more operating systems on devices than on desktops in an organisation. Just when they were getting their air back – along came Android and opened the doors to the public cloud even more. But, by this time organisations had realised that this was going out of hand. While some have got third party companies to manage their mobile policies – other have strict guidelines about the devices they can support. But now, they are going to face a dilemma that will be difficult to handle – the Windows Phone 7.

Being launched this week, this device will change the ground rules again. It has got a refreshing new interface – which claims to be a lot more people centric. Better integration with Microsoft Office, Sharepoint and Outlook is also being touted – though without copy/ paste support.

The phone’s interface is divided into hubs rather than being a collection of icons. It relies on the users’ tendency to look for everything with one glance at the phone. The whole screen of the phone is divided into only about six hubs that can be increased by new third party applications.

Something extremely exciting to look forward to – and another thing that you may have to support. All the best!