It's about separation

RIM is confident that its new products will appeal to employees as well as enterprise IT managers. A key feature of the BlackBerry ecosystem, called BlackBerry Balance, is the ability to separate the smartphone into corporate and personal workspaces, observed Jeff Holleran, senior director of enterprise product management at RIM. The separation technology is built into the BlackBerry device and enabled by a connection to the BES 10 server.

"We built the BlackBerry Balance functionality from the root of the device so we could separate out the personal side of the device from the work side of the device. Those things that the end user does with their applications are completely separate from the work application and the data is separate," Holleran told FierceMobileIT.

"As an enterprise administrator, I want to protect every bit of my corporate data on that device from any harm. So I want to make sure there isn't any data leakage and there is no crossover of data, such as the population of corporate address information into Facebook," he said.

"Having the separation built-in has been one of the well-received features as we talk to our enterprise customer base and as we talk to end users, because the last thing an end user wants to do is find out they have to sign a contract that says that their entire device can be wiped because they connected it up to the work environment," said Holleran.

Holleran explained that BES 10 will be a consolidation of the company's enterprise mobility management product portfolio, which includes mobile device management, security, infrastructure and app management products. It will include a unified web-based console that will manage BlackBerry 10s and other versions of BlackBerry, PlayBook tablets, as well as Android smartphones and tablets.

"With the launch of BlackBerry 10 in Q1, we are going to be rebranding the Mobile Fusion suite of products over into the BES 10 brand name. As a part of that, we are supporting iOS and Android devices. We've reaffirmed our commitment for securing data at rest on iOS and Android devices in Q1 of next year. We have already made a public commitment to bring security for data in transit onto those devices as well," Holleran explained.

"The number one issue that enterprise customers raise with us is the security of the data found on the mobile device. They are starting to look beyond, 'how do I secure the device?' to 'how do I ensure that the data on that device is secured from any data leakage?'" Holleran said.

"The future of BlackBerry in the enterprise continues to be very bright. We've got products that will manage the full variety in a heterogeneous deployed mobile environment that we see many people going to today," said Holleran.

"There are still a number of industries that fall under tight regulatory control that are going to stay with a single mobile environment. BlackBerry continues to be the preferred solution for those environments," he added.