BlackBerry courts hosting partners with BES10

Smartphone vendor reveals its BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 (BES10) will be managed by selected partners rather than in-house

BlackBerry is making its BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 (BES10) available to a raft of new hosting partners as it aims to snatch back the ground it has lost to rivals such as Apple and Samsung in the smartphone/tablet space.

But as yet, no UK partners have been announced.

According to an official BlackBerry blog interview with Jeff Holleran, senior director of enterprise product strategy at BlackBerry, the move reflects the trend towards hosted services.

“The hosted model is changing how organisations are approaching traditionally on-premise IT services. While IT spending is increasing around the globe, many organisations are investing in hosted IT services to mitigate in-house hardware and overhead costs,” he said.

Holleran said in the Q&A that the solution can be scaled according to the size of the customer and allows firms to provide employees with a range of devices including BlackBerry 10, iOS and Android devices, while securely separating work and personal information.

When asked why the firm is making BES10 available to hosting partners, he said it is because the technology opens up new opportunities for BlackBerry, its partners and its customers.

“As we focus on the enterprise market, BlackBerry understands that there are a number of ways [in which] organisations want to deploy BES10,” he said.

“BES10 delivers proven BlackBerry security and controls to organisations of all sizes with mixed mobile environments. It’s optimised for multi-platform BYOD environments, as well as for industries with the most stringent security requirements. For those companies looking to control costs and limit their in-house IT resources, BES10 Hosted will allow them to deploy BlackBerry’s trusted, secure service within their organisation with ease,” he added.

The vendor will be working with a “variety of hosting partners around the globe”, he explained, but three were announced today including US-based firms Exchange My Mail and ISEC7 Group, and Germany-based Solvitio.