RIM Mobile Fusion to add BlackBerry security tools to Android, iOS
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Research In Motion announced on Tuesday that it will soon launch software that will bring security and management features once only found on BlackBerrys over to Android and iOS phones and tablets.
The new tools, which RIM is calling BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, will allow businesses to set up and control Apple’s iPhone and iPad, as well as smartphones and tablets running Google’s Android operating system, as they have done for years with BlackBerry phones and more recently, the slow-selling PlayBook tablet.
‘We are pleased to introduce BlackBerry Mobile Fusion — RIM’s next generation enterprise mobility solution — to make it easier for our business and government customers to manage the diversity of devices in their operations today,’ said Alan Panezic, RIM’s vice president of enterprise product management and marketing, in a statement.
‘BlackBerry Mobile Fusion brings together our industry-leading BlackBerry Enterprise Server technology for BlackBerry devices with mobile device management capabilities for iOS and Android devices, all managed from one web-based console,’ Panezic said. ‘It provides the necessary management capabilities to allow IT departments to confidently oversee the use of both company-owned and employee-owned mobile devices within their organizations.’
In announcing Mobile Fusion, RIM touted itself as ‘the leading provider of enterprise mobility solutions with over 90 percent of the Fortune 500 provisioning BlackBerry devices today,’ a nod to its still-large market share of the business market for smartphones.
But the Canadian company also acknowledges that when it comes time for consumers to buy phones and tablets for themselves, they’re increasingly choosing rival devices and then bringing those gadgets into the workplace.
‘The enterprise market for smartphones and tablets continues to grow in both the company-provisioned and employee-owned (Bring Your Own Device or BYOD) categories,’ RIM said. ‘BYOD in particular has led to an increase in the diversity of mobile devices in use in the enterprise and new challenges for CIOs and IT departments as they struggle to manage and control wireless access to confidential company information on the corporate network. This has resulted in increased demand for mobile device management solutions.’
Among the features RIM said Mobile Fusion will offer for Android and iOS phones and tablets is the management and configuration of devices, as well as security features such as remote locking and data wiping, the creation of multiple user profiles on shared devices, app management and control over how a device connects to the Internet, among other settings.
While some would seem to love having an iPhone or an Android that’s as secure and easy to manage at the scale a large business would require, others such as ReadWriteWeb has asked if RIM isn’t ‘shooting itself in the foot with Mobile Fusion?’
GigaOm described RIM’s stance with Mobile Fusion as ‘If you can’t beat iOS and Android devices in the market, you might as well secure them.’
Currently, Mobile Fusion is in ‘early beta testing with select enterprise customers,’ RIM said. But the company is accepting ‘customer nominations for the closed beta program which will start in January.’ The commercial rollout of Mobile Fusion isn’t expected until late March.
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— Nathan Olivarez-Giles