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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."
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
Because you can manage multiple platforms from one place knowing one set of rules? I thought that would be obvious...
It's transitional (or rather, I assume, coexistent) software for businesses that are already using RIM's offerings. A gamble to keep them sort of under their same umbrella under the guise of "it's part of our overall cohesive ecosystem so it'll work better than option X."
So they're creating an alternative way of working with the iPhone? Oh man, apple lawsuit incoming.
As of iOS 4.3, Apple has an extensible set of APIs that allow third-party applications to manage iDevice endpoints in the Enterprise (iPads / iPhones, even iPods). Apple refers to this as "MDM" (Mobile Device Management). There are already numerous players in this space.
More here:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/business/integration/mdm/
So no, no lawsuit coming, particularly as Apple doesn't actually make these tools themselves.
Yes, they do.
It's called an "Installed Base" and it includes pre-existing configuration, know-how and reputation (trying to speak from a BES admin perspective (which I'm not anymore)).
Apple do have a MDM solution in Lion Server called Profile Manager. Its web based (server-side is Python with a Postgres DB).
Its a little flakey, but not too bad once you get over some of the undocumented "features" (like don't put certificates to be pushed out in the Everyone profile, or you'll get exceptions in Server.app)
Not quite what I meant.
What I meant was "how does adding the magic word 'cloud' resolve the issue? You can't just press a button on the phone marked "Cloud" and have it automagically connect to a centralised, Internet-based management system. There are various online storage systems you can sync your phone to (which is essentially what iCloud is), but in and of themselves they don't intrinsically give you a way that you can log on from a PC in head office and remotely configure everyone's phone."
Yes they do. For example BES allows you to tie devices into a corporate PBX so that you can have a dial by name directory that works for cells. So for example you call Ken Black on your BlackBerry the blackberry does a lookup and sees that Ken is using an office phone in Seattle and dials you directly to that. The next day you call the same name and it sees he's in his car. That's not forwarding BTW those are direct connection sending signals back to the PSTN.
Apple and Google don't have anything remotely like that. Many of the PBX vendors have that sort of software but (at least 2 years ago) Blackberry had the best implementation of it.
That's not the only thing BES is for. Blackberry allows for some rather advanced configuration. For example application management like you would with Windows desktops.
At some point, someone in an MDM-using company is likely to notice that all their users have transitioned to iPhones and Droids and will wonder why they're paying for both Exchange and the RIM software which does mostly just the same thing.
Exchange and MDM systems like BlackBerry BES, Good For Enterprise etc. only "do the same thing" if all you care about is basics like push e-mail and passwords/locking. Any company that takes mobile device management seriously (e.g. device application restrictions, e-mail/URL filtering, etc.) will always need more than the basic Exchange functionality. So they are always going to have Exchange PLUS *some* MDM system, but what they won't want to have is Exchange + BES + some other MDM for all the other devices. Since today BES only works with BlackBerries and those other MDM systems work with all the other devices, companies are forced to either support two or choose between them. This is a smart move for RIM, given that those companies might end up ditching BlackBerries so they don't have to pay for two MDM systems and now they can have one MDM system that will work for all devices.
"95% of all Slashdot
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.
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.
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