Pentagon Readies Contingency Plans Due To BlackBerry's Uncertain Future

cold fjord writes "Nextgov reports, 'The Defense Department, owner of 470,000 BlackBerrys, is distancing itself from the struggling vendor while moving ahead with construction of a department wide app store and a system for securing all mobile devices, including the latest iPhones, iPads, and Samsung smartphones and tablets. Just two months ago, when BlackBerry announced the company would radically curtail commercial sales, Pentagon officials said their business partnership remained unaffected. ... A 2012 strategy to transition personnel from PCs to smartphones and tablets did not favor any one device maker ... "This multi-vendor, device-agnostic approach minimizes the impact of [a] single vendor to our current operations," Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Damien Pickart said. Implementation of the strategy centers on a "mobile device management" system to track handhelds that touch military networks so that they do not compromise military information or corrupt Defense systems.'"

Comments

Government

[Phoenix666]

My favorite part of Blackberry's troubles is that it will cripple the federal government. All the politicians and their lackies run around with Blackberrys sutured to their hands, texting each other in meetings and rudely breaking off in mid-conversation to answer texts because they're incredibly important people and you're not. It's not intentional of course, but Blackberry's failure will do more for productivity in Washington DC and to bring the people living in the Beltway bubble back down to earth than all the NGOs, PACs, and citizen action groups combined.

With the NSA revelations, government shutdown, plummeting approval ratings, and now Blackberry's shutdown, DC is teetering on the edge of collapse (thank god). I'm wondering what will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Student loan bubble bursting?

Re:Government

[cosmin_c]

Obviously it'd be better to give them iPhones and Android phones so they can play Angry Birds. That will definitely increase productivity.

Re:Government

[oodaloop]

Why would productivity decrease with an iPhone or Android phone in your hand vice a Blackberry?

Re:Government

[cold fjord]

I do have the habit, considered unfortunate by some, of bringing facts into the discussion that others would prefer to forget, or otherwise find "inconvenient." I hope that was what you remembered.

Re:Government

[Anonymous Coward]

I was reading your post and was thinking, wow, this sounds familiar. Then I looked at your username and remembered why.

Aaaah, yes. Nothing like an ad hominem response to prove you can't refute what was posted.

Hmmm, facts that voter ID laws don't suppress turnout don't fit your close-minded notions? Facts that Obamacare is the failure predicted by anyone not in the tank for Obama create cognitive dissonance in reactionary leftists?

Yeah, call the poster names.

Oh, yeah. Workforce participation is the US is now the lowest it's been since that last total Presidential failure Jimmy Carter.

Democrats - every generation has to put one in the Presidency just to find out what a dumb idea it is.

Re:Government

[gstoddart]

All the politicians and their lackies run around with Blackberrys sutured to their hands, texting each other in meetings and rudely breaking off in mid-conversation to answer texts because they're incredibly important people and you're not.

And nothing different will happen if the manufacturer of the device changes, because this has nothing at all to do with BlackBerry.

They'll just be self absorbed people with a different kind of phone.

Re:Government

[Jason Levine]

It's not so much a matter of improving the Congresscritter's productivity as it is keeping them from "being productive." All Congressfolk should be given iPhones/Android phones with Angry Birds and told that they can't vote on any legislation until they 3 star every level. Instant Government Improvement!

Re:Government

[dgatwood]

Hmmm, facts that voter ID laws don't suppress turnout don't fit your close-minded notions?

Neither you nor the article provide any such facts. The facts merely show that the number of people who voted is greater, not that there was no increase in the percentage of legitimate voters who were turned away and gave up on voting. Any claim that the former proves the latter is a non sequitur (unless 100% of the public attempts to vote). To actually prove that suppression did not occur, you would need, at minimum:

• The total number of votes
• The number of people turned away who did not later come back to vote (possibly at a different polling place) even though they were legally eligible to vote

It is remarkably hard to gather that second piece of information accurately, but without it, any claims that voter suppression did not happen are nothing more than ordinary opinions with no factual support whatsoever.

Put another way, your argument based on totals is equivalent to saying that the population of the United States is increasing, so the percentage of people who die in any given year must have gone down. While the latter is probably true because people are living longer, it does not follow from the first statement. The population can also grow if more people choose to have kids, if people choose to have more kids, or if more immigrants are allowed into this country. In fact, the population could grow even if the annual death rate increases, so long as the number of additional kids exceeds the additional death rate.

Similarly, an increase in the number of voters just means that more people chose to vote. If there are a hundred voters and five are dissuaded from voting by the hassle, then 5% of voters were suppressed, but 95 people voted. If in the following election, 150 people decide to vote, but stricter laws make it more of a hassle, and fifteen are dissuaded, then 10% of voters were suppressed, but 135 people voted. We would say that voter suppression increased even though the number of total voters also increased. The two statements are not contradictory.

But to get back on topic, I don't have a lot of sympathy for the DOD and the rest of the federal government. The decline of Blackberry has been steady and consistent for the past several years. If this is coming as a surprise to them—if they have not already taken steps to encourage adoption of other platforms—then they are incredibly shortsighted, and deserve whatever pain the transition causes them.

Re:Government

[zeroduck]

It's not intentional of course, but Blackberry's failure will do more for productivity in Washington DC and to bring the people living in the Beltway bubble back down to earth than all the NGOs, PACs, and citizen action groups combined.

I like to dream, too.

Surprised it took this long

[ddtmm]

I would have thought they would have had a plan a long time ago.

Ya they have a plan.

[will_die]

Now it only take them 2-3 years to get it implemented and approved from the security office.

Wait, what?

[Dr. Manhattan]

Implementation of the strategy centers on a "mobile device management" system to track handhelds that touch military networks so that they do not compromise military information or corrupt Defense systems.'"

Why would you even allow handhelds to "touch military networks", unless they were military-supplied handhelds?

Re:Wait, what?

[oodaloop]

DoD has been talking for a while about a BYOD approach. Not sure if that's what they mean here, but it's possible.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called COTS. And in most such cases, there's going to be an approval process in between. e.g. "this device meets our security requirements".

Also, any device being talked about here is going to be limited to unclassified data. Type I equipment (such as Sectera Edge) is a whole other ballgame.

Re:Wait, what?

[TheCarp]

Just leave the blast doors cracked open, seriously improves the signal.

Re:Wait, what?

[tibman]

It's safe to use authorized civy devices on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIPRNet

Same Thing in My Realm of the US Gov.

[CMYKjunkie]

In my little rear-end of the US Government (agency of less than 1500 employees) we have been on BlackBerry since 2003. Moving to iPhone over the course of this year with the troubled waters of BB. I won't shed a tear. Our IT folks have stuck with BB 7 devices and the attachment handling stinks, web browsing is horrible, and I hate the keypads versus touchscreen keypads.

Re:Same Thing in My Realm of the US Gov.

[hawkbat05]

There are a lot of people who still prefer real keyboards. I've used several different BlackBerry's (including a new Q10) as well as several Android devices (Xperia X10, Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4). Even with all the neat third party keyboards available on Android, I haven't yet found one that let's me type as fast as my Q10. This is why the Torch owners seem to like their devices so much.

Re:Same Thing in My Realm of the US Gov.

[faedle]

I've told the IT department where I work they can have my Blackberry Bold when they pry it from my cold dead hands.

Re:Build their own system?

[alen]

because there is no reason to reinvent the wheel

a lot cheaper to buy iphone or android and pay someone to code your internal apps

Possible outcomes

[Wintermancer]

I was talking with a colleague who works in the defence communications security intelligence field this summer regarding the possible end-game for BlackBerry.

Currently, for US and Canadian government BlackBerry's, they do a scheduled production run in the US (all chips, semiconductors, etc. are produced in known secured facilities to ensure end-to-end security is maintained).

They could just do the same with either the iPhone or Android devices. Code review all software, microcode, crypto algorithms, etc. to ensure that security requirements are met and no foreign actors are slipping in anything unwanted. Alternately, they could just buy the rights to produce the BlackBerry in perpetuity.

It should work until someone jailbreaks and roots their phone to run Angry Birds, Candy Crush or other "productivity" apps.

Snowden Leaks

[Anonymous Coward]

So I've been looking over the snowden leaks( I could of missed them and I'm aware of there BIS arrangement with Saudi Arabia and India and was dissapointed) and didn't see Blackberry on them, you know for all the discussion on /. about this kinda stuff you think this would be a talking point for the security minded folk around here.

Uncertain?

[eek_the_kat]

Uncertain future? I think Blackberry's future is anything but uncertain.