Blackberry and the Corporate World

Introduction

Of all the mobile platforms there's none more synonymous with the world of business than Blackberry. Developed by Research In Motion (RIM), the Blackberry platform won many fans early on as it was the first device to offer push email. Instead of user shaving to regularly check for new emails, the Blackberry system alerts the user as soon an email arrives.

Blackberry

The Blackberry has been the smartphone of choice in the enterprise for some time, and for good reason. It mastered the most important business app, e-mail, and comes with all the controls IT requires. But enter the iPhone, stage right. A slick device that everyone craves and the developed world is smothering with new applications. So the question is, what ultimately wins in the enterprise?

With about 36 million BlackBerry devices in use globally, half of which are enterprise-connected, BlackBerry has about a 17 million to 18 million device lead on the iPhone in the enterprise. Hundreds of organizations around the world have 5,000 or more BlackBerry devices, and a few run more than 50,000. In the past decade, BlackBerry has set the standard for enterprise-grade, reliable and secure mobility (B., K., 2010).

Blackberry and the Corporate World

Let's start with the IT organizations that care about architecture, security, scalability and manageability, and that have so heartily embraced the BlackBerry platform. They value the ability of the BlackBerry platform's closed-loop system to reliably and securely enable mobility in an inherently unpredictable mobile world of roaming devices.

They value the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), not only because it securely and reliably routes data, but because it provides seamlessly integrated advanced mobile device management to give IT comprehensive control via 420+ IT policies, over the air (OTA) application push and security control, and enterprise application white-list/black-list control. And they value the RIM network operations center and its worldwide network of BlackBerry Relays, which provide near bullet-proof security, message queuing with guaranteed delivery, massive scalability and high availability approaching "five nines."

Right now, much of what enterprise IT values in BlackBerry is missing from the iPhone with or without a third-party technology like Microsoft ActiveSync. No native VPN. No native Mobile Device Management (MDM). No private on-premise secure OTA App push (Moore, 2011).

BlackBerry is built from the ground up for speed and excels at messaging, collaboration and communication. You can read fast, type fast, jump/cut/paste from app to app fast, and talk at the same time. You can even work offline when there is no coverage using rich on-device apps, and the platform will sync automatically when back in coverage. Heck, even the battery seems to last forever.

Good support in terms of business and financial software means the Blackberry platforms in widespread use in accountancy firms in the UK. For example, account managers at chartered accountants Taylorcocks use Blackberry devices running Sales Logix Mobile software to access its customer relationship management system when they're out in the field. Similarly, fee-earners at accountancy firm Johnston Carmichael use their Black-Berry smartphones to relay ...