[frankzaman]

Just came across this on the Yahoo message board. I can't judge the credibility of the source but it's great to see non the less!

Yahoo! Message Boards - Research In Motion Limited - Enterprise switching back to Blackberry

"I could tell you what I've heard from numerous business associates, colleagues and leaders from other companies who are switching their entire corporations back to Blackberry"

Any other corporate types out there seeing this?

[Rootbrian]

Not sure, but I hope it gets more coverage. Crackberry should blog about this!

[Thunderbuck]

Not sure, but I hope it gets more coverage. Crackberry should blog about this!

No. Random posts on stock market forums are not news items.

[recompile]

Well, I wouldn't be surprised. BYOD is a recipe for disaster.

If this isn't a trend yet, it will be after the first major breech.

[Angelo_Campher]

This is where RIM is failing. They really need to market their strengths which is security, data compression, BlackBerry Balance and now activesync piggy backing off BlackBerry Fusion for encryption.

Market the devices to the professional and let the rest take care of itself. Right now their marketing is neither here nor there and for too long now has the other platforms been drinking their milkshake in the corporate world.

[grahamf]

I think those companies were simply trying out BYOD and realized it was not worth it.

Or the IT department found it a nightmare to manage the multitude of systems, and put their foot down and went with ONE system.

[belfastdispatcher]

Sometimes you have to let companies learn from their own mistakes

[bbqkid8]

Funny. Just yesterday one of my students was showing me his iPhone 4S and how he couldn't talk into it... whether it be for Siri or for a phonecall, but the bluetooth worked. I thought this was a one-off kinda thing, but apparently it's real according to that Huffington Post article posted in that link.

[Frank Castle]

As a enterprise mobility professional overseeing 5000+ Blackberry as well 1000+ iOS and Android devices (support via Good Technology) this isn't a trend of anything.

Every company is trying to understand BYOD and how (if) it fits with their company, culture and meets their needs. We implemented a BYOD program over a year ago and to date we have a couple hundred employees (out of 25k) so a blip. It's nice providing the option but many employees would rather keep their technology separate from work as well have their employer provide the device (and pay for it).

I understand the "entitlement" attitude and see it everyday from Apple fans at work, but not one of them can show me something business related that cannot be performed on a corporate Blackberry. Every App they tick off that can be used for "work", Blackberry has a similar App.

99% of BYOD users are merely doing corporate email / PIM and when we did the CBA / ROI - Blackberry is still cheaper to procure and manage. If (when) we do offer iOS as a corporate offering it would have similar restrictions which surprise, surprise is the reason employees want to use their own device.

We have provided a program for those that want to use their device of choice and I'm not surprised the adoption is not large.

RIM has the worst marketing and if they marketed what they do well it would help them as the OS 7 devices provide much of the functionality people want other devices for (outside of Apps).

[Sith_Apprentice]

Very well written Frank and just about dead on the money. One thing I would add, GOOD Servers are junk compared with BES. They are extremely limited in the customization of the IT policies and frankly, a secure container on an unsecure device is worthless. Thats why I despise even using them in a trial here in the DoD, and also why NSA ranks the security of GOOD far less than that of BlackBerry on BES.

[sleepngbear]

Frank touches on a very significant point: device restrictions. Obviously the number of apps available pales in comparison tonthose for Androids and iOS. But there are still plenty of useful apps ... 50,000 is nothing to sneeze at. The problem is that so many BB's out there are on BES, and by necessity are probably pretty well locked down, which leaves a great number of BB users with the impression that they can't do anything with their BBs that they could do with others. I can tell you that this is exactly the reason why I dropped my BES plan for BIS years ago ... the company I was with at the time basically crippled my phone for some of the things I wanted to do with it. Not saying this is 100% of the problem, but it contributes greatly to the negative perception of BBs.

[Lead_Express]

I wrote a post not too long ago about how I think people who are issued a restricted BlackBerry for business use get a bad impression of what BB can do for them on the consumer side. It's 2 different worlds really.Thanks for the insight Frank, Sith and others.

[rolltide78]

Frank, What is your approach to Playbook/BBX devices down the road? We have the same set up with BES and Good. We disable Activesync due to security.

[palmless]

As a enterprise mobility professional overseeing 5000+ Blackberry as well 1000+ iOS and Android devices (support via Good Technology) this isn't a trend of anything.

...

RIM has the worst marketing and if they marketed what they do well it would help them as the OS 7 devices provide much of the functionality people want other devices for (outside of Apps).

Agreed, RIM needs to do more core-focused marketing. Have an IT guy snatch an iPhone/Android/whatever phone out of the hand of some suit, hand them the latest blackberry, and dismissively say "Learn to deal with it". Some sort of strutting music with the IT guy breaking a smile as he walks away and the suit slumps in defeat.

"Don't let users risk your job" or "Show the boss who's boss" would appeal, many companies still make "IT" decisions and not business decisions, it could be a rich vertical.

[Economist101]

RIM has the worst marketing and if they marketed what they do well it would help them as the OS 7 devices provide much of the functionality people want other devices for (outside of Apps).

One, if RIM's problem is one of marketing and fixable, why haven't they fixed it by now? I mean, what are they waiting for, a solar eclipse?

Two, to say you can provide much of the functionality outside of apps is like saying you have an airplane that can replicate everything abut an A380 without the flying; for many people, apps are the reason for the purchase, so to say you can replace everything but apps doesn't really solve the problem.

[grahamf]

RIM really should do entrenching marketing, or have a separate marketing portfolio specific to making companies more familiar with the new Blackberrys and their security features, and the best ways to configure them (as I'm pretty sure disabling third-party apps is not necessary for most companies, especially with blackberry balance)

[bbmme]

with the OS2 update for playbook, it's probably more enterprise focus as well eh.

[Frank Castle]

Frank, What is your approach to Playbook/BBX devices down the road? We have the same set up with BES and Good. We disable Activesync due to security.

Well at the moment there is no management outside of the BES policies around Bridge.

From what I've heard you will need another BES (in addition to your BES) for Playbook management. It will be similar to Blackberry Server Express and free but I think it will still face adoption issues as that is another server / VM you will need to standup and manage etc.

Outside of that, I think it will be great having a BES management of Playbook as Good with iPad leaves much to be desired (though it's coming along). From what I've seen it will enforce password, password timeout and have remote wipe via Balance for "work" tagged content. I didn't have time for the beta that is underway and at the moment am not sure the OS 2.0 launch will support this BES or be POP/IMAP/ActiveSync based.

We also have ActiveSync disabled so it will be interesting.

[highos]

From what I've heard you will need another BES (in addition to your BES) for Playbook management. It will be similar to Blackberry Server Express and free but I think it will still face adoption issues as that is another server / VM you will need to standup and manage etc.

Isn't that what BlackBerry Fusion is? And yes it's suppose to sit in front of BES and will be cross-platform. In a few of the videos recorded at CES I do recall RIM employees mentioning their OS 2.0 devices being on Fusion for their RIM email.

Edit: RIM's website on Fusion :: http://ca.blackberry.com/business/so.../mobilefusion/

[Frank Castle]

Isn't that what BlackBerry Fusion is? And yes it's suppose to sit in front of BES and will be cross-platform. In a few of the videos recorded at CES I do recall RIM employees mentioning their OS 2.0 devices being on Fusion for their RIM email.

Edit: RIM's website on Fusion :: BlackBerry - Mobile Fusion - Manage BlackBerry Apple iOS & Android Devices in Canada

There is a lot of confusion on this and the initial Fusion will only be a BAS to the other BES servers (BES, Server Express, Playbook BES). Fusion (BES 6.0) will be a fully intergrated solution and looks to use ActiveSync vs. a service account.


This is my understanding when discussing with my TAM.

[kemj]

One, if RIM's problem is one of marketing and fixable, why haven't they fixed it by now? I mean, what are they waiting for, a solar eclipse?

Two, to say you can provide much of the functionality outside of apps is like saying you have an airplane that can replicate everything abut an A380 without the flying; for many people, apps are the reason for the purchase, so to say you can replace everything but apps doesn't really solve the problem.

No. An airplane is to air as a phone is to calls. Your analogy is valid only if it was said that a phone replicates everything except phone calls. You're just stating that your airplane can't surf the ocean.

[ThePoisonBerry]

Most large Fortune100 companies are still on BBs-- they never moved off.

[frankzaman]

This should greatly increase corporate adoption: out of the box security!

http://crackberry.com/hands-blackber...berry-playbook

[Dapper37]

I work for a company with over 10,000 emplyees. 5000 aprox with BB, byod was never a choice.

[sinsin07]

As a enterprise mobility professional overseeing 5000+ Blackberry as well 1000+ iOS and Android devices (support via Good Technology) this isn't a trend of anything.

Every company is trying to understand BYOD and how (if) it fits with their company, culture and meets their needs. We implemented a BYOD program over a year ago and to date we have a couple hundred employees (out of 25k) so a blip. It's nice providing the option but many employees would rather keep their technology separate from work as well have their employer provide the device (and pay for it).

I understand the "entitlement" attitude and see it everyday from Apple fans at work, but not one of them can show me something business related that cannot be performed on a corporate Blackberry. Every App they tick off that can be used for "work", Blackberry has a similar App.

99% of BYOD users are merely doing corporate email / PIM and when we did the CBA / ROI - Blackberry is still cheaper to procure and manage. If (when) we do offer iOS as a corporate offering it would have similar restrictions which surprise, surprise is the reason employees want to use their own device.

We have provided a program for those that want to use their device of choice and I'm not surprised the adoption is not large.

RIM has the worst marketing and if they marketed what they do well it would help them as the OS 7 devices provide much of the functionality people want other devices for (outside of Apps).

25,000 employess and you think you have the pulse of BYOD? When you reach 85,000 BB devices with 233,000 employes you might have a different opinion. People tend not to take care of corporate owned devices. When you have a big enterprise with people losing Blackberries, devices needing a reflash, cracked screens, keyboards not working it gets to be a hassle. Let them bring their own device and the care an maintenance is on them. Throw the self encrypted app Good on there, manage it with Boxtone and forget about it. No more returns to ATT, TMobile, Sprint or Verizon.