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RIM To Offer Multiplatform Device Management
Aryden sends this quote from an IDG News report:
"Research In Motion is taking on mobile device management for Android and Apple iOS devices as well as its own products, introducing the BlackBerry Mobile Fusion product, on Tuesday. BlackBerry Mobile Fusion is designed to simplify the management of phones and tablets that run RIM's current BlackBerry OS and the emerging BBX platform, which is based on the QNX software that currently powers RIM's PlayBook tablet. But Mobile Fusion will also manage devices using the two biggest mobile OSs, Android and iOS."
So they're creating an alternative way of working with the iPhone? Oh man, apple lawsuit incoming.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
RIM also announced that Mobile Fusion is in early beta testing and will be released in "late March". Not trying to flame here, but does anyone seriously believe RIM's ship date projections any more? Have any of their devices or software packages shipped on schedule in the last two years? Here's hoping that they've learned how to calculate an appropriate Scotty Factor.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
Use Mobile Fusion instead of the available solutions for ISO and Android? Does RIM have some upper-hand on management software? Just curious.
This is nothing new. The idea of something like this has been around a long time, and it was inevitable to see it coming. RIM was destined to change their game.
Do businesses really still need this sort of managing software? Just put everything in the cloud and manage the cloud itself instead of managing the phone.
Or am I missing something? I never understood BES in the first place. It always sounded like an expensive way to get emails on phones.
A thousand times I do not want!!!
lol what? RTFA
So can Apple. And I won't post as an AC. :P
Does that mean there will be more RIM jobs?
I like this play. They've realized they have to open up in order to stay relevant at all. Managing other platforms is a great step one.
Step two, though, is to phase out BleakBerry OS and go to a modified Android for their handsets. They could bring a lot of good, missing functionality (and focus) to Android, and have a killer product. Perhaps they could provide some of the apps to all android users (for a small fee, of course).
Naturally the thing to do is to not announce this path, though. It will just make current users run away faster... but if they are able to bring it up alongside the current ecosystem and shift over to the new one cleanly, it could keep them around.
It's so expensive!
Ok, so two things play into this here:
1) RIM is behind the curve in mobile devices by one or two generations when it comes to mobile web, app development and app distribution. ... In terms of development it's more like 3+ generations behind. What they *do* have going for them is some of their core software products, namely the calendar and the contacts on RIM devices. I have yet to find one of those that is notably better on devices 4 years or more younger that come from the android of apple camp.
If they'd manage to improve a little and port those apps and maybe a few others, they might have a neat product on their hands for which they could also charge a solid price, since their audience isn't the app-store junk-freemium crowd.
2) If there is anything that really royally sucks compared to *any* quickly self-programmed and hacked solution we had on mobile computers more than 15 years ago it is the 'sync and manage' of calendar, contacts and other such data across mobile devices and desktops in this day and age. Honestly, what is going on in this department - or isn't happening for that matter - has me only this short of switching back to paper & pen based solutions.
Example: My HTC Desire HD is an awesome device, despite it sucking battery like no tomorrow and my blackberry still lasting me a week on one load - alongside with an unusable browser I might add. But the management of contacts and calendar data is a huge pain and reminds me of the mid-90ies era when I used to keep all of that more or less in a single text file. ... Which at times appears to me to be a far superior solution that what I've got now.
If RIM jumps on the software horse and actually manages to deliver where all others have failed up to now, they might just actually have a new business on their hands. I'd be glad to shell out some hard cash for viable, privacy protected calendaring, contacts and data sync solutions and such for current mobile devices and platforms and I'm sure quite a few other business customers would too.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
20 minutes ago I powered down our BES for the last time. Got all my Blackberry users over to iPhones and Android two months ago. It felt so good knowing that my last annual support payment was the final one. It really wasn't even me driving the migration away from Blackberry, it was my users basically demanding iPhones and Incredibles. Nobody here has cared about a RIM launch in ages.
This "multiplatform device management" BS is just another one of your mistakes. You are using publicly available API's for managing iOS and Android devices.
There are other companies which do this as well.
How are you differentiating yourself? You are not.
What are you doing instead? You are confusing the market by branding it along with Blackberry Enterprise Server and you're also diluting your brand value.
I am not the ( or one of the ) CEO's of RIM but I can summarize what you should do:
- Focus on getting BBX based phones out ( and change the name to something else )
- Focus on getting the Playbook OS 2.0 update out with native email and calendaring
- Don't focus on other side things that dilute your brand value further. You already tried with Blackberry connect for Nokia before and how did that help? It did not. It just helped Nokia's E series get noticed as a serious business phone
- With this MDM, you wont be able to make even the ( bungled-up) difference that you made with Blackberry Connect for Nokia.
Last and not the least for God's sake don't think that Blackberry Mobile Fusion will help sell more PlayBooks just because it works with iOS and Android.
Make sure you get PlayBooks to talk to BES/BIS.
Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Just your average 27 year old geek without an MBA degree.
What's with all this "RIM is unreliable" nonsense? Apple's MobileMe has been down more this year that RIM has in the last 10. They've had 3 outages in the last decade, the longest being the most recent (still less than a day for most users). Even then, most of their users were completely unaffected; many of those affected only experienced some slowdowns. Oh, and RIM didn't lose a single message.
RIM is more reliable than your service provider. Hell, the electricity in your house is more likely to go out than RIM's services.
So, when was the last time any decent technology company had a three day outage? Well, I don't know about three days, but in 2008 Apple's MobileMe service was out for 18 days -- and that's a $99/year service! iCloud and Siri have also already experienced outages -- WTF?
Google also suffers from outages, again, far more often than RIM. All things considered, RIM is the only company that you can seriously rely on to provide consistent service.
Required reading for internet skeptics
RIM should just go away.
Ok, we get it. Americans like iPhones and Android. Will all of you shutup now. Not everyone has access to unlimited 5G data plans that allow us to connect to random-internet-email-a-la-carte with our Appledroid jPhones.
Blackberry is successful because RIM provides a lot of the back-end that allows mobile providers to deliver usable Blackberry service even on older networks with slow data speeds.
Plus, RIM Blackberry is still one of the FEW smart phones you can get today with actual buttons. Some of us still like buttons even though we want a smartphone. Go on, and try to convince me how touchscreen is better. Oh and that trackpad... talk about lovely. It's like a thumb only version of the trackpad on the new macbook pro.
My favourite blackberry is the Pearl. It has the numbers down the middle for easy dialing. It is a PHONE after all. And you use it completely with 1 hand. OMG it's a 1-hand capable smartphone!
My mom always says, if you have nothing constructive to say, say nothing. In this case, I'm glad to hear about this product because it means that Enterprises can get all of the RIM management goodies and still facilitate the Andropple crowd.
Apple's MobileMe has been down more this year that RIM has in the last 10.
Asking because I genuinely don't know: how much of that MobileMe downtime has affected customer's messaging? Were the outages in, say, MobileMe's photo gallery website or in their mail system?
in 2008 Apple's MobileMe service was out for 18 days -- and that's a $99/year service!
Forgive me for quoting AT&T, but they were the only carrier who published a rate chart that I could find without digging around longer than I'm willing to. It looks like their cheapest "BlackBerry Personal" data plan is $360/year. That plan pays for more than just BlackBerry messaging, just as MobileMe includes more than just email, so I'm not sure how'd you'd calculate the relative marginal costs of those features.
iCloud and Siri have also already experienced outages
...neither of which caused messaging slowdown or delays. You keep comparing apples to oranges without comparing Apples to BlackBerries. How much have those respective companies' messaging systems - just messaging and not web hosting or cloud music storage! - been down in the last 5 years? How much do their customers pay them for just messaging - not web hosting or cloud music storage! - each year? Without that data, comparisons are meaningless.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?