Since the official launch events on January 30th, we’ve been launching BlackBerry 10 in markets around the world. Early reviews are in and the feedback has been positive, with anticipation growing in the United States – particularly among business users who have long appreciated the features and benefits of the BlackBerry platform.

BlackBerry 10 is designed for those who are active, connected, and who want to get things done quickly. It learns how you work to intelligently filter, prioritize, organize, and predict what you need. Beyond the beautiful hardware design of the BlackBerry Z10, BlackBerry 10 excels with the flow of apps to enhance your experience, and offers unified communications with the BlackBerry Hub. BlackBerry 10 also comes with the redesigned Documents To Go, deep integration with cloud storage providers like Box and Dropbox, as well as useful business apps like Cisco WebEx Meetings and Splashtop remote desktop, which are available on the BlackBerry World storefront.

For businesses and professionals, security and reliability are critical. BlackBerry Balance allows BlackBerry Z10 smartphones to be leveraged for both work and personal use – keeping personal and work data separate but maintaining a seamless experience that allows you to access both worlds side by side.

BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, our next-generation enterprise mobility management solution, allows IT departments and administrators to manage not only BlackBerry 10 smartphones, but also iOS and Android devices – all from a single unified and web-based console. With BlackBerry 10, BlackBerry Balance, and BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, your business will have an advanced and secure mobile ecosystem

Beginning today, B2B customers can work directly with their T-Mobile sales representative to pre-order their new BlackBerry Z10 smartphones, with delivery expected as early as the end of this week. If you’re a business that doesn’t have a T-Mobile sales rep, find one on the T-Mobile web site. For consumers and end users, sign up for updates on when you’ll be able to purchase your BlackBerry Z10 from T-Mobile online or in-store.

Last week the BlackBerry® 10 Jam World Tour – Enterprise Edition was held in Madrid, Spain. 121 developers took part in some very interesting sessions, demonstrations, and workshops. With these events, Research In Motion® (RIM®) aims to help enterprise developers find out what the BlackBerry® 10 platform has to offer and provide experts in building applications to show developers the wide variety of tools currently available. These tools include BlackBerry® WebWorks™ using HTML5, CSS and Javascript®, and the NDK/Cascades™ leveraging C++. On this occasion, attendees also become versed in BlackBerry MDS-CS, BlackBerry® Enterprise Service 10, and BlackBerry advantages in security.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Developer Blog »

This week, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mike of our Communication & Collaboration Services group to discuss the new BlackBerry® Resource Center and all that it has to offer. Check it out below!

Can you give me some background on yourself and your role at Research In Motion® (RIM®)?

I manage the Business-to-Business IT Marketing Programs for North America. My focus is on helping our customers and prospects stay up to date with all of the products in our ever-expanding portfolio, as well as to understand what they are, how they work, how to leverage and manage them, and the benefits they can bring to any organization in terms of efficiency, security, and new revenue opportunities.

What is the BlackBerry Resource Center?

The BlackBerry Resource Center is the single source for all IT and business BlackBerry webcasts, white papers, videos, demos, partner solutions and more. It’s more than just a website library; the BlackBerry Resource Center is a complete online events platform which gives us the flexibility to share information in a variety of ways. Some examples of shared documents include live and archived webcasts, on-demand white papers, case studies and videos, interactive collaboration and demo sessions, and one-on-one or one-to-many chats with BlackBerry product experts from RIM or our alliance partners.

I’ll break the space down and describe a few of its components, all of which anyone can access once they’ve registered and logged in:

• Conference Hall: The Conference Hall hosts the webcasts and live Q&A sessions.
• Solution Showcase: This is what you would call the tradeshow floor in a physical conference. Here you can browse BlackBerry and partner booths to access collateral, watch videos, and most importantly, chat with company representatives in order to get answers to your questions.
• Resource Center: This is where all of the on-demand materials are located and easily sorted by media type. If you are looking for specific information, simply use the Advanced Search function to help you find what you need.
• Collaboration Room: This is where we will hold live desktop sharing sessions on a variety of topics.
• Special Offers: As new offers become available, we’ll post them here in addition to all of the other ways that people find out about special offers.
• Help Desk: This is where you can run a system check to ensure that you are able to leverage all that the space has to offer, or get troubleshooting help on the Resource Center functionality directly from a technical representative.

And many, many more! The personal content management is one of the greatest overall benefits, allowing you to store material that interests you in a virtual briefcase, among other functionality.

What unique benefit can the resource center provide?

For one, this is all about simple, consolidated access to information. We want the resource center to be your hub for all IT and BlackBerry business information. The second thing is that this is not just about information consumption – we want this to be about collaboration and interaction. If you have questions after reviewing materials, then we’ve included ways for you to get answers through IM chat or email.

I think it’s also important to acknowledge what the resource center isn’t. It isn’t a place for software downloads, tech support, or product technical documentation. However, the good news is that those things are always available on BlackBerry.com!

Who is the resource center targeted towards?

A lot of the content today is geared towards IT managers and business decision-makers who need to ensure they have the information required to help them manage their BlackBerry solution and, more importantly, ensure that they are leveraging all of the great capabilities our solution has to offer.

How’s the webcast series going?

Great! The feedback that we’re getting is that people love the Resource Center, and they love to see the webcast schedule so they can ensure they don’t miss an important session. Plus, a lot of the series is focused on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet in the enterprise, which we’ve seen a lot of interest in. We’re also working on additional sessions so you’ll see the list of topics continue to grow.

Another great thing about the BlackBerry Resource Center is the ability to run multiple sessions simultaneously, so look for us to hold multi-track full day events in the future.

Thanks Mike!

To explore what the resource center has in store for you – and to register for your free account – head over to the BlackBerry Resource Center and check it out for yourself!

“We started mobilising the company three years ago and have never looked back.

BBVA is the second biggest bank in Spain and one of the top ten in the world. With more than 150 years’ experience in the sector, it has over 110,000 employees in more than 30 countries and over 47 million customers. In a company like BBVA, employees need to stay in touch with each other and the decisions made at HQ often affect the other countries where the bank has operations. We host regular trips for employees to other companies in the group, so the ability to work in mobility is a major advantage for BBVA, its staff and customers. For all these reasons, BBVA is among the 80% of Spanish banks that have put their trust in the BlackBerry solution.

Employee and customer feedback is imperative when developing applications for BlackBerry smartphones that are integrated into the workforce. It is so important to us at BBVA that we actually see it as “borrowing the intelligence of BBVA employees”. As well as talking directly to those involved, we also have a dedicated suggestions box for ideas and feedback. This allows for the discovery of solutions that are in line with user needs and which, in turn, improve their quality of life, increase company productivity and maximise the infrastructure offered by the BlackBerry platform and BBVA’s investment in the solution. In-house development is crucial, as it allows development team members to listen closely and understand the needs of their colleagues – the best way to maximise usability and ensure the best user experience.

The key factors for success for applications that are developed for BlackBerry smartphones used by the Group include simplicity, utility and usability. The solutions are under constant review, a continuous task that is vital to ensuring that structure, design and functionality all evolve in line with user needs and habits.

We chose the BlackBerry platform because it is the only platform on the market that offers reliability in terms of the future. Furthermore, it provides stability, it is a solution that is native to the corporate environment and provides maximum integration.

Our mobile head of mobile banking demonstrated an application that at first glance might seem very simple, but which is, in fact, a currency converter that goes one step further. It detects the country of origin and the country where the user is geopositioned via the carrier to which the user is connected. This enables an exchange rate to be provided instantly for the currency that the user requires.

The BlackBerry platform and our work with the solution to mobilise the company has created a mobile culture in which the smartphone is by now part of the service offer for users (both internal and external). In fact, BBVA has more than 25 mobile projects, 15 of which have been implemented in the last 3 months.”

When I first joined Research In Motion® (RIM), I must have done about 50 tradeshows a year. That might be a slight exaggeration, but not by much! I loved travelling around the country and meeting with customers, but more important, this was a key part of RIM’s strategy to learn about various vertical segments and really engaging with the industry.

Through these events, I can’t tell you how many customers told me about how much they loved their BlackBerry smartphone — and they also provided valuable feedback about how organizations were using BlackBerry solutions in real life.

Over the years, RIM has utilized various feedback mechanisms and beta programs, which have changed with our customer base, technology offering, and size & scope of the organization. Regardless of the forum used, RIM’s interest in listening to customers, understanding core needs, and developing meaningful solutions to meet those requirements has remained at the forefront of our endeavors.

In this spirit, I’d like to introduce you to the BlackBerry Beta Zone – the central location where we communicate with and receive feedback from avid BlackBerry users and organizations like yourselves about beta software. So far, we’ve had great feedback from users about it.

With the BlackBerry Beta Zone program, organizations and individuals have the opportunity to test, evaluate, and share feedback on the latest BlackBerry software before it’s released. Whether you’re an end-user, a small business using BlackBerry® Internet Service, or an enterprise with globally architected BlackBerry® Enterprise Server infrastructure, the BlackBerry Beta Zone program is available for you to access.

In addition to the input you can have on future BlackBerry software, beta organizations enjoy access to pre-release software – which means they can test software in a non-production environment before deploying it widely to their organization, thus working out all the kinks in their systems/process. Additionally, having early access to technology allows IT organizations to better prepare staff for future upgrades, leading to smoother deployments and more productive constituents enjoying the latest technology.

Several software beta programs are launching in the near future including:

• BlackBerry Enterprise Server beta releases
• Enterprise instant messaging beta releases
• Enterprise collaboration software
• Chalk™ Pushcast software

Please note: beta programs for most enterprise software require a valid Non-Disclosure Agreement with RIM to participate.

BlackBerry Beta Zone continues to offer programs for consumer apps and past programs have included apps such as BlackBerry Messenger (BBM™), BlackBerry® Traffic, Facebook® for BlackBerry Smartphones and Twitter® for BlackBerry Smartphones. If you’d like more information on these programs, or to nominate your organization, click here for organizations and here for end-users.

The internal IT service desk here at Research In Motion® (RIM) knows me well! With the number of times I’ve dropped my laptop, messed up my email, and ‘accidentally’ deleted the wrong file from the server over the years, I’m pretty sure they have my mug shot posted in their offices.

But even for annoying users like me, the reality is that support is critical. And with smartphone devices becoming more ubiquitous and more robust in their capabilities, technical support is fast becoming a key facet in selecting an enterprise mobility vendor.

In between attending the Web 2.0 conference recently, I traded a few emails with the BlackBerry Technical Support Services Product Manager, Anna-Marie, to get a better understanding of the enhancements we’re making to this program.

Already available in 90 countries through five global support centers and offered in English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, BTSS offers a wide array of core services, preventative services and value add options for small and medium sized business (SMB) to large global enterprises. Have a look at this comparison chart for more details. I was surprised to find out just how much has changed since the days of Tx1-Tx5!

Based on customer feedback and partner demand, we’re updating the BTSS program effective as of November 22nd 2010 to better support two specific customer groups: BlackBerry MVS users and SMB customers.

BlackBerry® Mobile Voice System (MVS): MVS support is now included in the existing BlackBerry® Enterprise Server support contract. No separate support fees are required.

SMB: With increasing uptake of BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express in the small business arena, we have updated our BTSS program to suit this group’s growing needs:

• Given the pace at which SMBs operate, we now have a faster Basic response time of 8 hours.
• For SMBs with more complex or urgent requirements, we’ve also added a telephone submission process to the Enhanced Support offering.
• We’ve introduced new pricing for BES Express support which includes support for 30 BlackBerry smartphone users, and have created a per-person pricing option for deployments of over 30 BlackBerry smartphone users. Whatever your BES Express deployment size, we have a plan that fits your support needs and budget.

Overall, we’re constantly working at making technical support faster, cheaper, more responsive and flexible. What features would you like to see? What are other vendors doing that we should emulate? How could we better support your deployments? I look forward to your thoughts!

Learn more about BlackBerry Technical Support Services today!