Windows Mobile 7 job ad reveals “Unified (Communication) Store”, confirms Zune integration

It appears the Windows Mobile team, who has had a history for sharing good insights into the future development of Windows Mobile through innocent job advertisements, is not wasting any time sharing new information about Windows Mobile 7. A recent job advertisement for a Software Development Engineer on the “Communications Foundations” team writes,

The Mobile Devices division is Microsoft’s fastest growing, most cutting edge, and most competitive business. Windows Mobile 7 is a huge, important bet for the company and the team has benefitted from a recent influx of senior talent from around the company. Our users buy Windows Mobile devices to manage all parts of their work and personal lives through the use of phone, email, IM, SMS, calendar, contacts, photo sharing, and access to social networks. “Communications” is the Windows Mobile 7 team that owns that experience end to end from phone to connectivity to Windows Live and Exchange services. Millions of Windows Mobile customers all around the world use what we build in this team every day.

The Communications Foundations team is the engine room that powers these social experiences – the team builds the connectors and Unified Storage models that power all the social & communications experiences for WM7. The team is at the center of the rich change in how communications is happening, driven by the rapid shifts in social networking – Live wave 4, Facebook, Twitter etc. The team is looking for an experienced developer to drive how we enable exciting, new market-changing scenarios based on top of the Unified Store. You will help architect, design and build capabilities to enable these new end-to-end scenarios, and drive a clear model/view separation in our architecture.

As far as I’m aware, the “connectors” and “Unified Storage” referred to here is a new concept for WM7. Unfortunately the job description doesn’t go into any details, but in the context of communications, I’m predicting it’s a new framework designed to handle all the communication storage needs on a phone in a single, structured and open-access system.

If my prediction is correction, as opposed to the current method where each application has its own proprietary storage model (ex. Outlook Mobile, Facebook application, Twitter applications), this new framework would allow applications to store and retrieve any communications data on the phone in a consistent and managed manner, allowing for far richer integration.

Like icing on the cake, the job ad also confirms what has been hinted at for a very long time, integration with the Zune service.

Responsibilities
Deliver core platform technology to internal and external partners. Effectively design, schedule, build and deliver on a v1 product and existing products. Collaborate with partners such as Outlook Mobile, Database, Zune, Shell, and OS. Deliver detailed specifications for the technical architecture of the system. Help mentor other members on the Dev team.

12 insightful thoughts

  1. Double whammy.

    Can’t wait to dump this stupid iPhone (where apps simply crash, they close, they exit to the home screen, they’re just gone. Poof!).

    Up late, Long!

  2. At this rate, the first Zune sold outside North America will be a Windows phone. Can’t wait 😀

    Oh, and Long: I’m like how you’ve been doing many more WinMo stories lately. Keep up the great work. 🙂

  3. I’d bet money that Unified Storage is based on Live Framework, scheduled to ship with Live Wave 4, also mentioned in the job posting. Live Framework is a key part of Ray Ozzie’s “3 screens” vision, synchronizing apps and data between all devices in a user’s mesh, with a social twist.

    @bluvg yes, like WinFS. I think of Live Framework as “WinFS for the web”.

    I’ll go out on a limb and speculate that Jeffrey Richter is part of the “recent influx of senior talent” on the team. Could be completely wrong, but his latest blog post is about high-performance low-level communication with Live Framework, which fits quite nicely with Windows Mobile.

  4. Sounds great, but still not enough to get me to drop my Blackberry, even as a huge Microsoft fan.

  5. @Rusty

    Merely curious, what do you like about the Blackberry that WM doesn’t do? Or perhaps how it does it…

  6. This may sound a bit wrong but from reading about all this news, rumors and info on ‘xYz’ ‘Pink’ ‘ZuneHD’ ‘WinMo’ and ‘E3’ I’m just about to pee myself from all the excitement hahaha.

    Sorry but it’s the truth XD

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