The Droid from Verzion was released today (2009-11-06) and already we have people at work coming over and asking if we will support it with our Exchange and ActiveSync infrastructure. Well the answer in our case is 'no' and here's why

One of the big selling points in Android 2.0 (Codename Eclair), at least in the enterprise space, is native support for Microsoft Exchange Server support with ActiveSync. ActiveSync allows devices like those running Windows Mobile, iPhone, or Android to synchronize enterprise users' Exchange email inboxes with their mobile device.

It seems there is one large issue with the ActiveSync support in Android 2.0 - it does support some (all?) of the provisioning features present in the ActiveSync protocol (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd299443.aspx). Most corporate IT departments that implement ActiveSync will implement at least some of these features, such as Remote Wipe and PIN/Device Locking enforcement.

Without these features the ActiveSync features in Android 2.0 will probably not see much use with enterprise customers that are at least somewhat security conscious.

We tested the ActiveSync support in the Android 2.0 SDK emulator and indeed if the prvosioning protocol feature enforcement is turned on in Exchange no email information is synchronized to the emulator. If we disabled that check, then the emulator successfully synched the test email account.

If the Android device was synchronizing email and the security features were enabled after the first synch the emulator would display an "invalid username or password" warning on the emulator and no mail would synchronize.

There is an open issue in the queue on the Google Android project site on code.google.com asking for these ActiveSync provisioning features be implemented. Please head on over and star the issue so if can get more visibility to the Android developers (especially if you want to use your Droid with your enterprise Exchange environment):


http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=4475


Sorry for the bad news, but head on over to the issue and throw some more stars on it.

Later,
Flux.