The newly announced Mango update to Windows Phone 7 may bring an avalanche of new features to the platform across the board, but there are a few enterprise-focused changes Nokia E Series fans in particular should be quite interested. We reveal all after the jump.

When Microsoft announced Windows Phone Mango – or Windows Phone 7.1, if you prefer – last week, the headline-grabbing stat was that there are around 500 new features bubbling away under the surface.

10 things Microsoft Mango will bring to Nokia Windows Phone

All of those features will be aboard Nokia's first Windows Phone handsets when they appear towards the end of the year, but what does Mango have to offer more specialist phones such as the business-focused Nokia E Series when it comes to larger-scale enterprise deployments?

In a word, plenty. You'd certainly expect business phone excellence from the software company that brought us the all-conquering Office, and in Windows Phone 7, Microsoft has delivered. More specifically, the Mango update brings all-new business-friendly tools to the surface, which Network World has been having a closer look at.

The site pinpoints six key areas where Mango has upped Windows Phone's game in the enterprise stakes:

First of all, Mango ups Windows Phone 7's password security. Where before you could only set simple PINs, the platform now supports alphanumeric passwords too, which are typically more complex and harder to crack.

Mango also allows for security policies to be set in place for Exchange emails and their attachments, letting you set exactly who has permission to open, forward or print individual documents, and who doesn't.

Another big new addition is the support for hidden corporate Wi-Fi networks, allowing Mango phones to connect to company networks with hidden SSIDs without the need for a separate application to find the network.

In more general terms, Mango also brings with it the added abilities and HTML5 support of the full Internet Explorer browser, a key feature across the board whether you're a business or consumer user.

Then there's the Lync Mobile app, a unified communications client that can connect to Microsoft Lync, the overhauled Office Communications Server used for everything from IM to voice and conferencing.

Last up is a range of improvements to Exchange email functionality, including the ability to pin an Exchange email folder to the Start screen, support for combining multiple email inboxes into a single Live Tile, server-level search and support for threaded conversations.

We've only touched on the key topics here – for more details, we'd recommend heading over to Network World. But for those Nokia enterprise users out there, here's a question: does Windows Phone 7, and more specifically the Mango update, improve Nokia's viability as a corporate-scale smartphone option, and what do you think the biggest attraction is of Microsoft's mobile OS from an enterprise point of view? Answers in the Comments below, please!

Via: Network World