Channel rushes to RIM's aid in its time of need
Outage could highlight the strengths as well as weaknesses of smartphone vendor's infrastructure, resellers argue
Although industry commentators may be clamouring to talk up Research In Motion's (RIM's) demise, not everyone is convinced this month's outage will necessarily work out badly for the BlackBerry maker.
Connect Communications, a unified communications (UC) specialist reseller, was on the verge of signing up as an authorised RIM partner when the incident occurred.
Technical director Martin Cross said the episode had not put him off and would actually help BlackBerry VARs educate end users on both the benefits and drawbacks of RIM's proprietary infrastructure.
"Customers choose BlackBerry because it allows them to control their enterprise environment tightly," he said. "That benefit is also a weakness - if the infrastructure has a failure, you will get an outage.
"It will be very hard for enterprises to move from BlackBerry to an alternative such as Android or iPhone as you do not have that same control. As a reseller, so long as you explain that trade-off to customers, they can make an educated choice and manage that risk. My cynical side says that this episode will help them make a decision, as it is fresh in their mind."
Cross said Connect is looking to work with RIM to help it integrate UC into its customers' mobile estates. With the FSA now requiring financial services firms to store recordings of mobile calls, Cross said RIM represents a better option than either the iPhone or Android-based devices.
"Because of the capabilities of the BlackBerry infrastructure, you can do much tighter integration and control the end point much better," he added.
Dave Stevinson, sales director of BlackBerry distributor VIP Computers,
agreed: "This is a fantastic opportunity for BlackBerry to bounce back if handled correctly. The enterprise market is not fickle and it will tolerate this so long as it remains an exception," he said.
However, Mark Kacary, director of security distributor Cirrus, argued that RIM partners would inevitably face some fallout from the incident.
"BlackBerry channel partners should expect a backlash as there has been scant information from RIM as to what went wrong, why it went so badly wrong and therefore why end users should trust them that it is unlikely to happen again," he said.
Dave Ellis, director of new technology at distributor ComputerÂlinks, argued the wider channel could make hay from the saga.
"You can build redundancy into a system but you can't totally eradicate hardware failure," he said. "End users need to build proper business continuity plans and the channel should be helping them do this."
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