Back on the 13th of January, RIM held an event in Boston for press and analysts called Business On BlackBerry. RIM had the following experts on hand:
BlackBerry in the Enterprise in 2011 – Alec Taylor, Vice President, Product Marketing
BlackBerry Enterprise Portfolio in 2011 –Peter Devenyi, Vice President, BlackBerry Enterprise Software
PlayBook for Business – Ryan Bidan, Senior Product Manager for PlayBook
Some interesting news came out of the event including the fact that RIM is considering a cloud-based BES solution for mail clients as well as supporting multiple smartphone platforms.
“BlackBerry is and will continue to be dominant in most corporations,” Devenyi said. “It’s not going to be the only device, given the fact that consumers have the choice to bring in their own devices, and IT departments are often letting them in. So there’s a question there. Do those corporations have to manage those devices differently or is there the possibility that RIM might extend capabilities to make it easier for those corporations to manage those devices as well.”
It’s not clear exactly what RIM is saying here but it could be that RIM will be offering the type of solutions that Zenprise and Boxtone offer. Perhaps they’re in RIM’s crosshairs for an acquisition? There’s probably some discussion internally of build vs buy and we may see news of this come BlackBerry World.
