RIM goes for the whole fruit basket with BlackBerry Mobile Fusion

David Swan
Tuesday, 29 November 2011 20:50

Your IT - Mobility

Research In Motion has announced BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, an enterprise mobility solution for BlackBerry, Android and iOS smartphones and tablets.

With the stated aim of "simplifying management of smartphones and tablets for business and government", RIM has shifted focus from its flagging BlackBerry platform and taken a multi-platform, and multi-device, approach with its new release.

'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, Vice President, Enterprise Product Management and Marketing at Research In Motion.

'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. 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 organisations.'

According to RIM, it is the leading provider of enterprise mobility solutions with over 90 per cent of the Fortune 500 provisioning BlackBerry devices today.

The enterprise market for smartphones and tablets seems to be continuing to grow in both the company-provisioned and employee-owned (Bring Your Own Device or BYOD) categories.

As part of its announcement, RIM said that its BlackBerry Mobile Fusion will provide the following mobile device management capabilities for all supported mobile devices:
'¢    Asset management
'¢    Configuration management
'¢    Security and policy definition and management
'¢    Secure and protect lost or stolen devices (remote lock, wipe)
'¢    User- and group-based administration
'¢    Multiple device per user capable
'¢    Application and software management
'¢    Connectivity management (Wi-Fi, VPN, certificate)
'¢    Centralised console
'¢    High scalability

RIM has said that BlackBerry Mobile Fusion is currently in early beta testing with select enterprise customers, and the company is now accepting customer nominations for the closed beta program which will start in January.

General availability is expected in late March.