RIM opens the door to enterprise mobility
Friday, February 19th, 2010 Karen Ambrose Hickey, EditorOf all the announcements that have been made over the past few days at Mobile World Congress, I found RIM’s decision to offer a free version of the Blackberry Enterprise Server” particularly interesting.
In short, RIM is launching a new server software – “Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) Express”, a free version of BES which aims to target small – medium sized businesses who require the basic functions of the Blackberry Enterprise Server, i.e. the ability to access email, calendar, contacts but without all the jazzy advanced features or “super apps ” as RIM’s Chief Executive Mike Lazardis referred to them during Tuesday’s keynote speech.
The reason I’m a fan of this announcement is that, aside from the obvious cost benefits, by making its BES product more accessible and freely available, RIM is driving the adoption of enterprise mobility control in a world where mobile working is increasingly becoming the “norm” for many in the enterprise. And with a smart phone market share of 41.6% in the USA , a significant number of enterprises and Blackberry users will benefit from this development.
(This is an exciting first step. but, with most enterprises increasingly having to support multiple devices types and platforms, cross platform solutions are required.)
However, it’s important that these enterprises don’t get too swept away with their increased mobility by ensuring that they monitor and control enterprise mobility usage and costs. By having a central management system in place, enterprises will have total visibility of connection information and can use this data to shape relevant security and cost control policies. Using your new BES Express to deploy iPassConnect for BlackBerry and allow all your Wi-Fi enabled BlackBerry smartphones to avoid congested networks and data roaming fees would be a great start!
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Tags: Blackberry, smartphone
