[shakingthrough]

I need to preface this by saying that my knowledge of mobile devices, device management, and device software is limited. I am an independent physician who is a long-time user of BlackBerry devices, and am currently still in love with my Passport and BB10. Since I have staff privileges at several area hospitals, each of which are owned by competing health systems and each of which provide physicians an email address to receive their communications, that has contributed to the fact that I now have six different email accounts.

One of these health systems last year began using Citrix WorxMail for mobile email. Using Snap I was able to add their Android app just fine, and made sure to let their IT department know this since the instructions they sent to all hospital employees and physicians only mentioned iPhones and Android devices. Notifications of new emails would show up in the hub, but then I needed to open the app to view the email. Not ideal as compared to my other email accounts, but the hospital IT folks were surprised that it even worked on my BlackBerry. I can't believe anyone would want to get their email each time through an app. Regardless, now today they announced that they are switching to Bitglass for mobile device management, a company of which I had previously not heard of:

cloud access security broker | bitglass

Again I am by far no expert in this area but it looks to be BlackBerry's turf.

My understanding of the hospital's new email system is that they are using Microsoft ActiveSync, and the Bitglass servers for security.

iPhone and Android instructions have been repeatedly been sent out to all staff and physicians today, each time with more detail and directions, which makes me think some are having difficulty configuring the new email account for whatever reason. I was able to delete the WorxMail account and add the new email account very easily, and again made sure I let the health system's IT folks know. In fact it is working flawlessly, and all of my emails from that health system are now back in the hub instead of having to open an app, thankfully.

The point of the story is that it frustrates me that BB10 handles these various accounts so well, and possibly even better than the competition, but yet we faithful of this OS find ourselves in the tiniest minority group as compared to the ecosystems that won out. I also wonder if BlackBerry bias (as I would call it) leads some IT decision-makers to choose other competitors for their mobile device management. I don't know that for sure, as it's certainly possible that they vetted Bitglass and just found that it better met their needs than BES 12. Maybe it's just that I still have sour grapes, but I hate to lose.

[LyoobaBerry]

There is some bias towards BlackBerry MDM, with most of my clients being interested in Good for Enterprise


I just love seeing their faces and their voice changing when I tell them BlackBerry bought them

Also, as BES 12.4 supports everything, I have more and more people considering it versus Meraki MDM, despite latter being free with MX appliance

SE is for premium, unless you're that other fruit user