This week, Research In Motion (RIM) released BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) 10, laying the groundwork for the management of BlackBerry 10 devices in the corporate environment.
BES 10 and the appeal of the BlackBerry 10 platform to corporate customers will be key for RIM, which has long been a stalwart of that market segment. RIM's corporate dominance has, however, been threatened recently due to the growing bring your own device (BYOD) trend and the waning of mainstream consumer interest in BlackBerry devices.
Towards the end of last year, IDC predicted Apple's iPhone and handsets running Google's Android OS would together overtake RIM's share of the enterprise market. IDC forecast that, by the end of 2012, employee-liable Android shipments would hit 87.7 million units, while the iPhone would reach 37.1 million. This was in addition to the corporate-liable device figures, which were expected to be 15.1 million and 31.1 million, respectively. The forecast for BlackBerry devices was 5.2 million employee-liable shipments, and 14.8 million corporate-liable.
Speaking to ITWeb, RIM's senior director of enterprise product management, Jeff Holleran, says he is confident the new BlackBerry 10 platform, together with the corporate appeal of BES 10, will be able to counter this trend.
"BlackBerry 10 has been designed specifically to meet both the needs of the BYOD user and the corporation's need for safety and security," said Holleran. "Many corporations are actually looking for a way to secure their employees' mobile devices, while also allowing them the freedom they have become accustomed to."
Finding balance
BES 10 is the evolution of RIM's enterprise mobile management solutions and offers support for all BlackBerry devices, as well as iOS and Android. Until now, enterprises could use RIM's Mobile Fusion service to manage PlayBook tablets, iOS and Android devices, while using the previous version of BES to manage BlackBerry smartphones. BES 10 now offers the ability to manage these various components from a single Web console.
According to Holleran, the killer feature of BlackBerry 10 is BlackBerry Balance. "BlackBerry 10 devices are enterprise-ready out of the box, and can automatically connect to a secure mail server, but BES 10 adds additional features for corporate management and control."
Explaining the value proposition of BlackBerry Balance, Holleran said it essentially creates a "mobile workspace" on the phone, which allows for mobile app management and gives the user secure access to private corporate data. Applications that are white-listed by the enterprise can be installed into the user's work environment and can then access the data that exists within that space, all behind a firewall.
"In the personal environment, the user can do anything they want, install any apps they want and have fun, without any of their actions in that space interfering with the workspace," said Holleran.
"BlackBerry 10 devices powered by BES 10 offer a unique experience. The data is separated, but still accessible to the user through a single unified view." He explained that all notifications, from both the work and personal profiles, are displayed in the same "BlackBerry Hub".
'Tremendous interest'
Apart from the need to appeal to the consumer segment in order to hold on the corporate market, another factor at play is the shift towards corporate cloud services. Holleran, however, argued there is still "huge demand" for on-premise services such as BES.
"Businesses tend to only move small, low risk bits of their operations to the cloud." He added that with BES, corporate data is secured behind a firewall, while still being made accessible to the user in a way that is "different to any other mobile solution".
"BES 10 was developed in conjunction with feedback from our customers. Something we were constantly hearing from enterprises was the need for a product that would provide a single point of management across all mobile devices - and they want it from a trusted vendor."
BES 10 currently provides support for all BlackBerry devices, iOS devices and Android. In terms the Windows platform, Holleran said RIM has not seen sufficient demand as yet to warrant support for it. "Should there be higher demand for it in the future, we will absolutely look at supporting it."
According to Holleran, 1 600 unique enterprise and government customers have already signed up for the BlackBerry 10 Ready programme and BES 10 received the highest test scores RIM has ever had during a beta period. "We have seen tremendous interest from the market." He added that RIM has made an effort to make the transition to BES 10 as simple as possible.
Existing BES customers will be able to trade in their existing BES licences for BES 10 licences at no charge until the end of the year. The BES 10 software is also available as a limited 60-day free-trial and is available here.
BlackBerry 10 will officially be released by RIM globally on 30 January.
Share