One of our goals for this year’s BlackBerry Live conference is to integrate mobile technology not just in the discussions, sessions, and resources – but into the actual conference itself to help keep attendees closely plugged into all of the action.

Near Field Communication (NFC)

One of my all-time favorite technologies, Near Field Communication (NFC) will be integrated into BlackBerry Live in a big way. You’ll be able to scan into BlackBerry Live and BlackBerry Jam sessions and interact with aspects of the venue using the BlackBerry Live Conference App, but that’s just the beginning. You’ll also be able to share contact information with sponsors, scoop up links to resources and web sites, and take advantage of all that BlackBerry 10 has to offer when it comes to NFC.

BlackBerry Live Conference App

Shortly before BlackBerry Live the Mobile Conference Guide app will be available in BlackBerry World for you to download. This will be your ultimate conference guide, including a wide range of features:

• Find sessions, speaker, sponsor, and event details
• Receive event update messages
• View the conference agenda and floor plan
• Build and edit your conference schedule
• Scan into sessions using Near Field Communication (NFC)
• Complete conference and session surveys
• Share your information with conference sponsors using NFC

It’s not too late to register for BlackBerry Live!

Head over to www.blackberrylive.com to register for this year’s conference, and don’t forget that if you’ve attended a BlackBerry event in the past, you may be eligible for a $150 discount as part of the Alumni Discount!

Stay tuned for availability in BlackBerry World, and get ready for a seriously mobile conference! See you next week in Orlando.

Our Better Business Hub is currently taking a deeper look into how businesses can use NFC. The opportunities offered by the technology for your business are wide-ranging. It can allow you to market your company and reach out to your customers in very innovative ways, some of which are demonstrated in the NFC video below.

Anything with an NFC-embedded chip (or Smart Tag), whether it be posters, advertising boards or business cards, can be used to take consumer engagement further and interact with your customers and new business prospects in a new, innovative, and exciting way. The beauty of NFC is that automating tasks on your smartphone is really simple, as we found out earlier this year when I experimented with NFC Tags.

Consider using NFC to share your company details, direct customers to online information about a new product, promote a video, or to signpost your social media profiles. The opportunities are endless and it is important to remember – NFC is so much more than just mobile payments.

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Does your company use NFC? Where do you see potential for NFC in your business? Let us know in the comments.

Earlier this month, I sat down with Geoff from the Near Field Communications (NFC) Product Management Team at RIM to get his take on a top NFC myth we often see from our Inside BlackBerry for Business Blog readers. (FYI – the BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900/9930 smartphones and BlackBerry® Curve™ 9350/9360/9370 smartphones have built-in NFC.)

Editor’s Note: About a year ago, we sat down with Geoff for the first time to get his perspective on where RIM is going in the NFC space. If you haven’t had a chance to watch Geoff’s video interview, check it out here: How to use Near Field Communication (NFC) for Business.

Debunking The Top NFC Myth: NFC is not just about mobile payments!

Popular perception seems to be that NFC is just a way to make mobile payments. Although RIM has been a key mobile payment advocate – including becoming among the first smartphones to be certified by MasterCard® and Visa® for NFC-based payments and working with EnStream in Canada – this capability was merely a stepping stone to a BlackBerry presence in the NFC space. Mobile payment capability is just one part of NFC technology’s true potential.

With BlackBerry solutions, our vision is that NFC will become part of daily life, saving people bits of time wherever they are. The ability to pay for things, securely access the workplace, and exchange contact info with colleagues with the tap of a BlackBerry device are just a few of the NFC capabilities you can take advantage of today!

Here are a few examples of how NFC is already empowering today’s mobile workforce:

1. Replace access badges with BlackBerry smartphones

BlackBerry partner HID Global offers Secure Identity Services™, a comprehensive suite of web-based tools for managing physical access credentials (here’s the HID press release with more info). In case you didn’t know, Secure Identity Services is the first all-in-one web-based solution for enterprise credential provisioning and management. The HID platform provides businesses with the tools to create, use, and manage identities for traditional badges on plastic cards, for tokens, and for digital credentials on NFC-enabled BlackBerry smartphones.

2. Share information with BlackBerry NFC capable devices using BlackBerry Tag

Earlier this year, RIM announced BlackBerry® Tag, which allows customers to exchange information with a simple tap between any two NFC-enabled BlackBerry® smartphones. This technology makes sharing information a lot faster and much more personal. Here are just a few examples of what you can share with a single tap using BlackBerry Tag:

• Invite your friend to BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™)
• Share contact information
• Share content from the media applications
• Share voice notes
• Share documents from within Documents To Go®
• Share a URL from the browser
• Create Bluetooth® pairing with ease
• Transfer files

3. Smart Tags – “Work Like Magic”

Smart tags can contain a range of information, including web addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, coupons, graphics, media files, event details, and more. When you tap the smart tag reader on the back of your BlackBerry smartphone against a smart tag, your smartphone views the smart tag and presents you with the options to view or delete the smart tag. Smart tags can also help automate common tasks that you perform on a regular basis.

According to Annu, Senior Product Manager for BlackBerry 7, NFC technology on BlackBerry smartphones “works like magic”. Some smart tag ideas from Inside BlackBerry For Business Blog readers include launching the BlackBerry® Travel app when tapping the NFC tag on their suitcase, tapping an NFC tag beside their bed to set their alarm, and so much more. If you are interested in taking advantage of this unique technology, check out this blog post: Automate Common Tasks in Your Life Using NFC Tags and Your BlackBerry

We’d love to hear how you’ve been taking advantage of NFC technology – share you experiences with us by commenting below!

Near Field Communication (NFC) technology has been a key topic of conversation at our BlackBerry® Innovation Forum events in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). Business leaders have been learning about and discussing how NFC is being rapidly adopted by organizations in sectors such as transport, banking, payment, entertainment, hospitality, and retail. Companies worldwide are looking to take advantage of the benefits of this exciting new technology. The applications and future possibilities of NFC are vast, including:

• Ticketing: Gaining access to gigs and shows
• Travel and transport: bus, train, metro and airline access
• Payments: Using NFC to pay for items in shops instead of using a traditional credit or debit card, as a replacement for small cash payments at vending machines and convenience stores, and for peer-to-peer payments between individuals
• Access: Using NFC for physical access to secure premises instead of having a fob or separate security access keycard
• Identification: Your ID cards could be stored on a smartphone and displayed using NFC technology
• Sharing: Using NFC to share electronic business cards, photos, files or data with other people just by touching smartphones together (introduced recently as BlackBerry® Tag)

NFC has four major benefits: convenience, speed, interaction and security. Andrew Bocking, VP Handheld Software Product Management at Research In Motion® (RIM®) gave his thoughts on the uses of NFC in this short video from Mobile World Congress 2011.

Research In Motion is a central and innovative player in the NFC ecosystem. Several of our latest devices, the BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900 smartphone, the BlackBerry® Bold™ 9790 smartphone, the BlackBerry® Curve™ 9360 smartphone, and the BlackBerry® Curve™ 9380 smartphone include an NFC chip – future proofing the devices for developments and applications using NFC.

Increased popularity of “contactless payment” over the last few years has seen it become the most talked about form of NFC use. This method of payment has traditionally been achievable through a “contactless payment card”, looking much the same as a regular credit or debit card but with the card’s chip housing NFC technology. This is set to grow and develop quickly, and we hope to see smartphones increasingly take the place of traditional cards for many consumers. Research In Motion is at the forefront of smartphone-based NFC development and has recently been listed by MasterCard® as accredited for ‘Mobile PayPass Certification’. This means that they meet the functionality, interoperability, and security requirements of MasterCard for contactless mobile payments.

Last month at GITEX, Research In Motion Limited CEO Jim Balsillie announced the introduction of BlackBerry Tag, another NFC powered function for BlackBerry smartphone users. By tapping together two BlackBerry smartphones holding NFC capability, users may be able to exchange contact information, documents, URLs, photos and other multimedia content. No more losing vital business cards as the details are saved directly into the Contacts application.

NFC presents many exciting opportunities moving forward. We believe that this exciting technology can extend well beyond mobile payments and will enable our lives to become much more convenient as programs become integrated, all while remaining secure and reliable. We are encouraging our customers to think about how they will include NFC and contactless transactions in their mobile commerce strategies and customer interactions in the future.

For more information on our BlackBerry Innovation Forum series, follow us @BBEMEABusiness and join the conversation using #BIF11 on Twitter.

How do you see Near Field Communication affecting your day-to-day life in the future? Share in the comments!

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Near Field Communication (NFC) technology is on the rise in the mobile space, providing exciting new ways to share information, make mobile payments, and interact with your surroundings. Of the new BlackBerry® 7 OS smartphones, the BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900/9930 smartphones and BlackBerry® Curve™ 9350/9360/9370 smartphones contain built-in NFC capabilities. Being the device and technology lover that I am, I had to ask the question: How can this budding mobile technology be used for business? To find answers, I started with our NFC team to get a breakdown of how BlackBerry devices can use this capability.

As pictured above, the NFC antenna is located in the battery door of your BlackBerry smartphone, allowing you to simply tap an NFC smart tag to instantly read or write the data. Smart tags can be located anywhere, such as on an advertisement, movie poster, or in a business card. Blank smart tags can be ordered from third party vendors and written with information using the BlackBerry Smart Tags application that comes preloaded on the NFC-supported BlackBerry 7 smartphones. While I had known that my BlackBerry Bold 9900 smartphone had NFC technology enabled, it was amazing to realize that my smartphone can both read and write these smart tags with my own customized information.

Smart Tags Application

The Smart Tags application for BlackBerry smartphones contains an intuitive interface for managing all of your tags. To create a tag, simply press the menu button and select “Create Tag”. At this point, you’ll see form fields to fill in the title and URL. NFC-enabled BlackBerry smartphones can read information not only from smart tags, but also from other smartphones.

Now that I had the full scoop on what the technology is and what it can do, I switched my focus to how you in the business community could make use of it for enhanced productivity, improved CRM, and more. So, how exactly can NFC be used for business? I can think of at least few ways:

Sharing Information Using NFC

BlackBerry Tag will soon allow the sharing of documents, URLs, photos and more via a simple tap of two NFC-enabled BlackBerry smartphones. Additionally, you’ll be able to invite a friend to BBM™ (BBM 6.1+ required) using this technology, and create seamless Bluetooth® pairing for file transfers. The solution is designed to be secure and intuitive – stay tuned for further details on the Inside BlackBerry Blog.

Mobile Payment

A very exciting aspect of NFC technology, when coupled with BlackBerry security standards, is the ability to pay using your smartphone. Recently, the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and BlackBerry Curve 9360 became the world’s first SIM-based smartphones to receive MasterCard® PayPass® handset certification! Clearly there are convenient times ahead when you may be able to leave your wallet at home.

Promotional/Advertising

I believe that we’ll start to see NFC-enabled advertisements that allow real interaction with users, and a transfer of the experience to their mobile devices. Imagine, for example, a user tapping on an advertisement poster on the street and being able to purchase tickets to an event or browse reviews of products, all on the go. Capturing the attention of customers – as well as finding opportunities to engage with them – needs to happen very quickly when it comes to advertising and marketing. An instant and seamless technology like NFC allows this to occur at lightning speed in comparison to many other avenues of customer interaction and user experience. Lastly, this technology can augment existing promotions and campaigns to extend their reach and increase conversion.

Product Information

As I mentioned above, NFC allows individuals to access information about products with a single tap of their BlackBerry smartphone. In industries where physical products are present, such as retail, this can provide a brand new flow of specific information for customers, such as ratings and reviews, sharing through social media, and feedback mechanisms. The same concept applies to B2B where your business clients can enjoy the same access. For example, a printed invoice could include NFC technology that would allow customers to tap and pay securely with a BlackBerry smartphone.

NFC technology truly is inspiring and the use cases are limitless. Not only is this a new technology for BlackBerry users and businesses to take advantage of, it also holds the potential to fundamentally impact the interactions that take place through the sales funnel, between products and individuals, in business networking and interaction, and even internal applications.

For those looking for blank/writeable smart tags, a quick search online provides a host of options and pricing. NFC technology may not be enabled for all carriers, so please check with your service provider for availability.

Can you imagine a creative use case for NFC technology? Share your favorite!*

Related Posts and Resources:

• BlackBerry User’s Guide: Creating a Smart Tag
• Developer’s Guide to Working with Smart Tags
• Interview on NFC with RIM’s Andrew Bocking, VP Handheld Software Product Management

* By posting a comment below you acknowledge that you have read and accept these terms and conditions and that any ideas you post will be the property of RIM in accordance with the terms and conditions.

This year’s BlackBerry Live will give you our most mobile conference experience yet. We have some very exciting news: conference attendees will receive a BlackBerry Z10 smartphone, courtesy of Brightstar, our premier mobile sponsor!

Your BlackBerry Z10 smartphone will be a valuable tool throughout BlackBerry Live. The Mobile Conference Guide application has been designed to leverage features unique to BlackBerry 10, making it easy for you to:

• Build and edit your conference schedule in the Session Catalog while on the go
• Scan into breakout sessions using NFC functionality
• Interact with sponsors
• Complete conference surveys
• Much more

Quantities are limited, so register for BlackBerry Live today! To learn more about Brightstar, head over to www.brightstarcorp.com.

We initially unveiled the BlackBerry Q10 smartphone during the BlackBerry 10 global launch events on January 30th, and since then there’s been no shortage of excitement for its availability – particularly within our business social media communities. This powerhouse of a smartphone packs a serious punch with new features for both the hardware and for the BlackBerry 10 platform.

The beautiful design of the BlackBerry Q10 deserves specific mention. This latest BlackBerry 10 smartphone features a glass weave casing, a forged stainless steel frame, and a Super AMOLED touch screen – not to mention a sculpted keyboard designed to improve your typing speed, skill, and experience. It’s an evolution of the classic BlackBerry Keyboard that brings the mobile typing experience to a whole new level. Get an exclusive inside look at how the BlackBerry Q10 smartphone was designed on the Inside BlackBerry Blog.

Powered by BlackBerry 10, the BlackBerry Q10 learns and adapts to the way that you work and communicate. Every feature, every gesture, and every detail is designed to keep you moving. I’ve been using this smartphone for a couple of months now and I must say: the amount of emails left in my inbox for follow up back at my desk has been reduced to almost zero.

Features of the BlackBerry Q10 Smartphone

Features of the BlackBerry Q10 smartphone include an intelligent calendar, super-fast browsing, trusted security, camera with time shift mode, documents to go and adobe reader, built-in NFC technology, active frames, voice control, BlackBerry Maps, and a whole lot more. Check out the video below for an overview of the features included with the new BlackBerry Q10 smartphone straight from the product team that’s been hard at work designing the newest member of the BlackBerry 10 family. For a more in-depth look, visit the BlackBerry Q10 web site.

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Instant Action – your new best friend on the go

My favorite feature of the BlackBerry Q10 is “Instant Action”, which takes advantage of the physical keyboard to allow you to engage with your network of contacts extremely quickly. From the home screen of a BlackBerry Q10 smartphone, simply begin typing an action, such as “email” or “BBM”, followed with a name from your Contacts. You can then launch directly into the communication. This isn’t restricted to email; I just sent a tweet from my home screen by typing “tweet This weather is brutal! Where did Spring go?” – and it was immediately posted to Twitter without the need to even open up an application. Check out a quick demo from BlackBerry Jam Europe below:

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Combined with the intuitive gestures of the BlackBerry 10 platform, Instant Action provides you with a speed and efficiency that’s unparalleled in my experience. With this functionality the use of a physical keyboard is maximized to provide you with ultimate control and precision of action.

Availability and Pricing

Carriers around the world are beginning to roll out pre-orders as well as full availability of BlackBerry Q10 smartphones. To stay up to date on the latest news, check out our BlackBerry Q10 Global Availability Tracker on the Inside BlackBerry Blog.

What feature of the BlackBerry Q10 are you most excited for? Share in the comments below!

Did you know that both VISA and MasterCard have certified BlackBerry smartphones with NFC capabilities to be used for mobile payments?

Over the last couple of years, NFC technology has become increasingly popular in smartphones. Recent blog posts on the Inside BlackBerry for Business blog have shown that NFC-enabled devices can be used for a wide range of tasks, including access to your workplace and paying for your morning coffee. NFC has enabled many of us to see our BlackBerry smartphone as not only an important communications tool, but also as an efficient, contactless payment tool. When considering the use of a smartphone for mobile payments security is a major factor.

If you’re interested in learning more about some of the security features embedded in your BlackBerry smartphone when using it as a mobile payment solution, here are the details – straight from the BlackBerry experts!

According to our BlackBerry Security Certification Manager, Nayef Khan, “One major concern customers have when making mobile payments is security. A lot of focus in the mobile industry is put on the security of the “payment tap” process and overall device security. However, what’s often overlooked is how a credit card’s information travels directly to a smartphone, and how that overall data transmission process is secured.” In the NFC industry the systems that get your credit card data securely onto the device are called Trusted Service Managers (TSM). They are a key part of making NFC payments secure. BlackBerry is actively working on TSM functionality. The certification of BlackBerry as a VISA approved Trusted Service Manager (TSM) proves that the world’s top banking organizations recognize the high level of BlackBerry security standards.

So what are Trusted Service Managers (TSMs)?

A TSM is a cloud-based service that creates a secure communication channel between your NFC-enabled smartphone and the financial institution’s payment tool. The BlackBerry solution is designed to create a secure location within a ,secure container called a “Secure Element.” This secure storage area on an NFC-enabled smartphone enables financial institutions to store the sensitive payment information directly within the smartphone.

Our implementation of the TSM is known in the mobile payments industry as a “Secure Element Manager” (SEM). The SEM is responsible for managing space on a Secure Element. SEM also grants access to this secure space to mobile network operators or issuers of credit cards (know as Service Provider TSM or SP-TSM). Through the infrastructure that our SEM provides, SP-TSMs will have a single secure gateway allowing them to support any customer with an NFC-enabled smartphone that wants to enable a “mobile wallet” application. While the provisioning of credit card information is left to the SP-TSMs, the SEM allows for them to make a secure connection to the Secure Element. This arrangement also makes our solution highly scalable – new issuers can be on-boarded quickly.

Can you clarify what a secure element is, exactly?

As an analogy, think of the Secure Element as an apartment building. The manager of the apartment building (BlackBerry) allows each individual apartment (location for issuers and application providers) to be unlocked by a unique key. New tenants (issuers and application providers) can move in as soon as they are approved by the manager and provided with the key.

Visa’s approval of the BlackBerry SEM shows that we have been able to meet the rigorous standards that are expected in the financial industry. Over the years, BlackBerry has been associated with strong security and we are using our experience to build a secure foundation in this new domain.

Securing the “payment tap”

We have talked about how we secure the transmission and storage of sensitive information. In order to provide end-to-end security for a mobile payment transaction, the payment process also needs to be secure. Ever since BlackBerry launched NFC-capable smartphones, we have been working with the financial industry and credit card companies to certify our devices for use of mobile payments. The BlackBerry Curve 9360 and BlackBerry Bold 9900 were among the first smartphones to be certified by MasterCard and Visa for NFC-based mobile payments.

These certifications were granted on the basis of the BlackBerry smartphones meeting the functionality, interoperability and security requirements of MasterCard and Visa. The process includes extensive technical, security, and usability testing. This helps to ensure reliable and secure transactions which are compatible with the global standard for chip-enabled payments. With these certifications, any MasterCard PayPass or Visa payWave issuing bank globally will be able to deploy accounts to the SIM card of these smartphones.

Currently, all NFC-enabled BlackBerry devices in market have received the necessary payments certification. We have also done some great work with our brand new BlackBerry 10 platform. Looking at the device and back-end certifications in unison, BlackBerry is undeniably at the center of NFC innovation. The tools and security are available; we expect wireless carriers and financial institutions to pursue mobile payment solutions using BlackBerry smartphones in the near future – and some have already been implemented.

Is your business looking to make use of mobile payments? Does the TSM infrastructure alleviate some of your concerns regarding mobile payments? Share in the comments below.

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

We’ll have much more on the way for our enterprise developers, including a chat about creating apps that are destined for the BlackBerry Balance enabled work perimeter of BlackBerry 10 smartphones. Keep it locked to the BlackBerry for Business and BlackBerry Developer blogs this week to stay on top of the action!

If you’re a developer at the conference, come and say hello at the social media desk! And if you’re not, say hello anyway on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The newly designed Documents To Go on BlackBerry 10 builds on over 13 years of optimizing our mobile Office suite, and rather than just porting our existing app and feature set from one platform to the next, our mission was to deeply integrate documents into the underlying DNA of the BlackBerry 10 platform for an end-to-end experience that is far greater, more productive and more secure than can typically be achieved as a stand-alone application.

Take a Peek

Since email and attachments go together like peanut butter and jelly, it is no surprise that one of our main focuses of this release was flowing seamlessly from the BlackBerry Hub to previewing an attachment – all without the need to launch a separate application.

Our Word, Excel and PowerPoint file previewers gracefully slide over top of an email message with a “content is king” design strategy. This means that all the clutter of distracting toolbars and options fade away, leaving the user to a glorious full screen view of the document. Within the previewers, you can navigate pages, slides, and worksheets, rotate the device, and zoom in and out on content to determine the next appropriate action, which is typically share, edit, or save.

Tapping ‘share’ flows to a screen where you can select from an array of different options such as email, BBM, and cloud accounts among others. Simply tapping two NFC-enabled BlackBerry smartphones together allows you to instantly transfer files right from the document previewer.

It’s worth mentioning that although the document previewers are accessible from the BlackBerry Hub, they can also be leveraged in other applications such as File Manager or 3rd party solutions. At any time you can peek from the document back to any previous activities. Previewers also exist for other popular file types such as pictures, videos, music, and Adobe PDF files.

Feel Free to Tweak

By no means are we trying to cram all the features and functionality of Microsoft Office on a desktop computer into a mobile form, but instead we are aiming for key scenarios where we can eliminate the need for a laptop or desktop computer.

A great example of this is the reason we are investing so much on our mobile presentation capabilities including rendering the underlying presentation content such as charts, graphics, tables, formatted text and complex slide layouts. If you’re going to invest the time in creating beautiful presentations (and documents and spreadsheets,) we want to ensure that they remain beautiful as they make their way to your BlackBerry 10 smartphone. Once you realize that you can rely on the quality and accuracy of the data being viewed on the device, you’ll then have the confidence to edit and make last minute tweaks on the fly – slowly weaning yourself off of the reliance and delays associated with laptop edits. And when it comes to mobile editing features, we are trying to keep it simple with frequently used actions like adjusting bullets, indentation, spacing, fonts, colors and formatting as well as inserting, copying and pasting text.

Our InTact Technology, which preserves original formatting, goes one step further, and is designed to help ensure that any complex elements that might not make sense on a mobile device (like Macros in Excel) will be maintained when editing and sending updates from your smartphone. Again, you may not edit often, but when you do, we want it to be a tweakin’ awesome experience!

Stand Out While You Speak

Let’s first break down a typical meeting in which you’re aiming to present to a group. Today, you can create the slides in PowerPoint on a desktop computer, laying out the content so it looks pixel perfect with cool slide transitions and effects. Given the efficiencies in doing this on a bigger screen and reliance on a keyboard and mouse, we don’t see this part of the equation changing anytime soon.

However, the next step requires you to lug around a bulky laptop to present the content. This is where we think a mobile device is suited better to fit this need and lighten the load. To do this requires a combination of the right software, hardware and pricing. As mentioned above, Documents To Go now covers the software side with the peeking, tweaking and even a new “presenter mode” that shows speaker notes, upcoming slides and overall progress, while the audience sees only the content being presented. On the hardware side, BlackBerry 10 smartphones use an industry standard micro-HDMI connection plus enough mobile computing power to drive output to an external display including over 125 stunning PowerPoint slide transitions. Since many TVs and projectors include HDMI inputs, this end-to-end experience is now available to the masses whether at work, home, or school. Not only will presentations look great, the presenter is sure to impress when this is all pulled off from a BlackBerry 10 smartphone.

The second way that BlackBerry customers often “speak out” when collaborating on files is when working on a project with another individual. Whether in the same location looking over each other’s shoulders, emailing drafts and comments back and forth, or using a web conferencing solution, we’ve noticed some common themes around the value of real-time discussion and document editing. Yet again, we thought to ourselves that a BlackBerry 10 smartphone is perfectly suited to simplify this process. This is why we are introducing BBM Video with Screen Share, which connects two collaborators as intuitively as making a phone call and then allows them to both see the same file in real-time and discuss as needed.

Eliminate the IT Mobile File Freak Out

As mentioned, many individuals have always wanted mobile access to their files, but at the same time, IT continues to struggle with ways to secure corporate documents without being too overbearing. With BlackBerry Balance on BlackBerry 10, we are addressing this issue by storing corporate data in an encrypted Work space. All of this happens automatically behind the scenes, so let’s take a closer look at how this applies when peeking at an attachment, making edits, and then saving or sharing those files.

First off, when an email is pushed to your device, BlackBerry Hub is smart enough to know which account is work and which is personal. If a work email contains an attachment, no problem, just go about your business. You can preview the file and edit to your heart’s content. It’s not until you go to share it or save it that the underlying security features kick to for example, prevent you from accidentally leaking corporate data. Now this doesn’t mean that you’ll be totally restricted. As you can see from the above screens, you’ll be prompted to store corporate attachments in the work space of the device with a little suitcase icon indicating where the file is headed. And although IT admins ultimately have the last say when it comes to corporate files, in many cases they will allow the ability to save content to popular cloud providers and enterprise network drives for the productivity gained when enabling these existing document workflows, so long as they can track and restrict as needed.

As the name suggests, BlackBerry Balance really does “balance” the needs of users and administrators, and when you combine it with Documents To Go, we are achieving a complete end-to-end flow that is unlike any other mobile platform today. In fact, we’re just getting started and we are very excited for many of the additional features to come as we continue to work on the BlackBerry 10 platform and amazing document experiences!

Learn more at www.blackberry.com/DocumentsToGo