By day part of my job is the BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) Admin. One of the advantages of BlackBerry over other platforms is RIM (via BES) gives a central location to manage the mobile devices in the organization and a plethora of IT Policies to keep them secure. Since the buzz word in IT is the “Cloud” and cloud services it looks like RIM may be heading in that direction.
“We will be launching a cloud service,” RIM Vice President Pete Devenyi told Mobilized in an interview following a Boston event
“We’re not going to launch a cloud service for everything, for every combination,” he said. “There are going to be mail servers out there that we don’t connect with through our cloud service. There will be other partners that choose to connect to other mail server providers and they may offer a hosted service on their own.”
It’s good to hear RIM is thinking of offering more services for the enterprise. Although you can virtualize BES cloud services could be a better solution for companies that don’t have the capacity for an on-site BES server and DB server.
Devenyi also suggested a future RIM solution could support other platforms.
“BlackBerry is and will continue to be dominant in most corporations,” Devenyi said. “It’s not going to be the only device, given the fact that consumers have the choice to bring in their own devices, and IT departments are often letting them in. So there’s a question there. Do those corporations have to manage those devices differently or is there the possibility that RIM might extend capabilities to make it easier for those corporations to manage those devices as well.”
Well isn’t that interesting. RIM had tried this road in the past with services like BlackBerry Connect which was found on some Nokia phones. Personally I tried this on a Nokia E70 and it was definitely no BlackBerry. We’ve come a long way since then so hopefully an Andoird or iPhone Enterprise Activated on a BES will be more seemless.
“In this case, it would have to be done differently because it would be more native,” he said. “It wouldn’t use BlackBerry protocols to manage those devices, but conceptually yes, we did that with BlackBerry Connect.”
Given the pressure IT personnel are getting to have the latest and greatest devices activated on the enterprise this may be welcome. RIM has been getting good at creating commercials that show the BlackBerry experience. If they go forward could we expect a BlackBerry version of a “To the cloud” commerical?
via: All Things Digital
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