Steve Ballmer is expected to reveal Microsoft’s new vision for the corporate mobile phone on Tuesday. The Mobile Device Manager 2008 will allow IT administrators to control every feature of the corporate phone, set security policy and specify applications. The announcement will come during Mr. Ballmer’s keynote presentation at the CTIA Wireless Conference, according to Information Week on Tuesday.

With the increasing use of smartphones in the enterprise, Microsoft thinks it has the answer to the IT manager’s dream. Develop a de facto standard, Microsoft Mobile Device Manager 2008, that will give those managers complete control over phones distributed to employees. They would be able to determine which applications are installed, set security policy and security mechanisms, mandate VPN usage, and disable certain features, say, the internal camera.

The mechanism is similar to that currently used by corporations to manage their PCs. "The IT folks, the same as it was in the PC environment, don’t want to roll out 10,000 devices. They want to roll out one device 10,000 times," said Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg. "Microsoft is hoping to replicate the success and the model of the PC."

Several mobile phone manufacturers are expected to build phones that comply with the standard immediately: Samsung, Palm, and Motorola. Microsoft expects to release the server side components in 2008.

Microsoft hopes that this technology will give them an edge against RIM and its popular BlackBerry. However, according to Digital Trends, this central control is "a process which (historically) produces technologies which generally work, but are riddled with edge cases, exceptions, and unforeseen gotchas".