CIOs have another way of adding BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 to their arsenal of mobile management tools — renting it.
BlackBerry said today that service providers are now able to offer BES 10 as a hosted service.
The option “is focused on providing more choices and flexibility in how enterprise customers can manage their mobile environments,” John Sims, president of enterprise services at the company, said in a statement. “We’re working closely with our hosting partners to deliver best-in-class managed services to customers in a way that meets their unique business needs without compromising on security, reliability and cost-efficiency.”
Hosting partners will be able to offer two tiers of service (silver and gold) to meet different corporate needs.
Offering hosted BES is another way BlackBerry is trying to address pressures on CIOs to outsource or find cloud versions of many corporate applications. It also will be another revenue source.
In making the announcement BlackBerry listed two providers who will be offering the service: Exchange My Mail, of Jericho, N.Y., which offers hosted Microsoft Exchange service; and ISEC7 Group, an international mobile management provider which sells its own EMM suite.
The big benefit of a hosted version is that CIOs don’t have to worry about the infrastructure needed to support an on-premise version of BES
Blackberry says the hosted version’s benefits also include
–A multi-platform EMM offering with a user self-service portal for easy authentication and device management;
–Container options for all supported devices: Native built-in BlackBerry Balance for BlackBerry devices and Secure Work Space for iOS and Android;
–Application management capabilities such as the ability to distribute public apps, custom apps, ensure device compliance and centrally manage work apps via work app catalogs and software configuration profiles;
–A unified console to manage existing BlackBerry OS devices as well as BlackBerry 10, iOS and Android devices;
–Support for BES10 Gold level EMM and BBM Protected.