Research in Motion (RIM) is hoping its new mobile device management solution — which accommodates devices running on Apple and Android mobile operating systems as well as BlackBerry — will boost the company’s profits as its BlackBerry smartphone market share declines. Martha Stewart Living is one of the first companies to use BlackBerry Mobile Fusion to facilitate bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies.
RIM rolled out its BlackBerry Mobile Fusion mobile-device management platform in April. The platform is designed to enable IT departments to manage iOS and Android devices, in addition to BlackBerrys. The software is aimed at IT teams trying to keep their data secure while still making users happy as the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend drives a growing number of personal devices into the enterprise.
“Part of the consumerization of IT – what that really and truly means – is the emancipation of the end user,” said Alan Panezic, RIM’s VP Enterprise Product Management and Marketing, during at a panel for press at the company’s BlackBerry World 2012 conference in Orlando on May 2. “End users are looking for the same type of elegance and experience in their personal lives in everything they do.”
For CIOs, that means dealing with the newfound “power of the end user” as they begin bringing their mobile devices to work – whether or not they’re authorized to do so, he said.
And IT departments need to be able to handle “whatever devices are of significance in the enterprise,” whether they’re Apple, Android or BlackBerry devices, Panezic said. Those are “some pretty substantial challenges for IT.”
Managing access across the firewall and expanding VPNs “becomes very expensive for the CIOs, when you’re trying to integrate across bit-solutions to bring something together,” Panezic said. “[That’s a] unique selling proposition for BlackBerry Mobile Fusion — the extension of an existing architecture makes it extremely simple for our customers ⦠And you’re not throwing a whole bunch of additional headcount at this solution.”
The initial launch of BlackBerry Mobile Fusion included an on-premise product, but the company announced that managed service and cloud editions are forthcoming.