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RIM To Offer Multiplatform Device Management

Posted by Soulskill on from the if-you-can't-beat-'em,-manage-'em dept.

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."

6 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. Late march? by Lev13than · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
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  2. Re:Why would IT departments by bananaquackmoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because you can manage multiple platforms from one place knowing one set of rules? I thought that would be obvious...

  3. Re:Why would IT departments by AdamJS · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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."

  4. Re:Oh Dear by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Re:Why would IT departments by schnell · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

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  6. Re:What? So I can enjoy service interruptions? by narcc · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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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