A number of businesses and government agencies have adopted telework initiatives to reduce costs, ensure continuity of operations, and minimize their carbon footprints. For example, participants in Arizona’s telework program drive an estimated 5.25 million fewer miles, generate 175,000 fewer pounds of air pollution and endure 181,000 fewer hours of stressful driving time per year. The United States Treasury Department saves an estimated $1 million annually on facilities costs though its telework program. Both BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 include capabilities that can help organizations make teleworking possible.

The new BlackBerry 10 platform is built for business, providing a range of features and applications that allow teleworkers to maintain constant communication with supervisors and colleagues. Consider BBM Video Chat and Screen Sharing on BlackBerry 10: the videoconferencing capabilities provide managers with face-to-face communications with teleworking employees, while screen sharing is integrated with Documents To Go for seamless collaboration. In addition, advanced collaboration apps such as BlackBerry Work Drives and Citrix WebEx Meetings, among other business apps, allow teleworkers to access business information and stay connected with colleagues on the go. These tools ensure that teleworkers have all the tools that they need to stay connected and work effectively, wherever they are.

While mobile access is crucial for teleworkers, it is equally important to ensure that their mobile experiences are secure and do not compromise information or data. Enterprise Mobility Management platforms such as BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 make managing a network of mobile devices simpler. BlackBerry Enterprise Service manages multiple device platforms, users, groups, applications, and policies from a single web-based interface. Learn more:

Organizations experimenting with teleworking will need to provide employees with the relevant tools while managing them in a simple, secure way. By doing so, they will enjoy the operational, cost-cutting and time-saving benefits that teleworking can offer.

What is your organization’s teleworking policy, and what devices and other tools are available for teleworking employees?

The growth of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend has transformed the IT industry and notably how businesses tackle managing mobile devices brought to work by employees. As a result, IT leaders have, and still do face, rapidly evolving challenges, and must minimize risk by balancing the demands of business end users with the security of corporate data; not to mention a consistent experience for productivity. The “BYOD” conversation is one of my favorites – and I’ve run into many on both sides of the fence. Some see it as a major cost-saving opportunity, while others caution that the real cost is paid through increased risks and potential breaches in the security of data.

In any case, it’s important to develop a strategy for the inclusion of mobile devices in your business. When considering BYOD, the importance of having a rock solid strategy only increases. Here are three ways that you can partner with BlackBerry to navigate the BYOD trend:

Implement a Scalable, Flexible, and Secure Enterprise Mobility Management Platform

BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 has evolved as a direct response to the needs of businesses around the world. We’ve met with CIO’s and IT administrators, and are heavily involved in the mobile landscape for business in a wide range of applications.

In an increasingly complex mobile world, BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 provides an integrated platform for IT departments and businesses to securely manage mobile devices. BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 brings together not only BlackBerry smartphones and tablets, but third party devices that employees are bringing into the workplace. In particular, network administrators can add and import iOS and Android users, create group memberships, view user and device information, manage applications, and much more.

With the recently updated BlackBerry Device Service component of BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, the platform can now support up to 15,000 BlackBerry 10 smartphones on a single server. This scalability can help your IT department lower management costs and ultimately decrease the total cost of ownership for your EMM solution and BlackBerry 10 smartphones.

In the weeks since its initial launch, BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 has received positive feedback from businesses such as Softchoice and Mobile Computing Corp. Inc. as well as from reviewers on social media. The platform has also been awarded with a 2012 Frost & Sullivan Award for Competitive Strategy Leadership for its BYOD solutions. Most importantly, BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 provides a platform for IT managers to manage, provision, and activate devices, administer controls, push mandatory applications, and more, all from a single web-based console.

Provide Business End Users with Seamless Separation of Work and Personal Data

The consumerization of business IT and the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend has created a need to manage both work and personal personas on the same mobile device. With BYOD, some businesses have enabled employees to use personal devices for work purposes. This trend increases the challenges for protecting corporate data, which can be compromised due to malware attacks, personal use applications, and other susceptibilities.

To meet the challenge, BlackBerry 10 smartphones managed by BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 have been tightly integrated with BlackBerry Balance technology, which is designed to separate corporate and personal data within the operating system. On a corporate level, businesses can now draw a defined line between work and personal perimeters, thus separating the respective applications, connections, and data. On an end user level, BlackBerry Balance provides end users with a seamless, gesture-based transition between their work and personal data:

Prepare for Future Expansion of Security Capabilities across Mobile Platforms

In addition to the existing enterprise mobility management capabilities of BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, we are expanding BlackBerry’s security capabilities with Secure Work Space for iOS and Android devices. Planned for general availability in the second quarter of this calendar year, this offering extends BlackBerry security to third party devices, essentially creating a separate and secure work space to hold corporate apps, work email, calendar, contacts, and more, without the need for a third party MDM provider, a costly VPN infrastructure, or multiple vendors.

As business mobility challenges continue to evolve, BlackBerry is committed to partnering with you to navigate the complexities of the BYOD trend. Consider the steps you can take to keep your business data secure, whether it be streamlining your enterprise mobility management with BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, providing your employees with the seamless data separation of BlackBerry Balance, or getting ready to extend BlackBerry security capabilities to iOS and Android devices with Secure Work Space.

Interested in BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10? Trade Up for Free

If you’re an existing BlackBerry Enterprise Server customer, you can upgrade to BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 for free with the BlackBerry Enterprise Service License Trade Up Program. We’ve created a five-step guide to show you how to upgrade. When you’re ready, you can upgrade by following the link below:

Upgrade Me to BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10

How has BlackBerry helped your business tackle the challenge of BYOD with BlackBerry, iOS, or Android devices? Share in the comments below.

A free service pack update is now available for BlackBerry® Mobile Fusion. The service pack includes enhancements to further help you manage mobile devices in your organization. Updates include BlackBerry® Device Service 6.1, Universal Device Service 6.1, and BlackBerry® Mobile Fusion Studio 6.2.

BlackBerry Mobile Fusion is designed to allow you to manage and secure BlackBerry®, iOS, and Android™ smartphones and tablets. The management tool is a unified web-based console called BlackBerry Mobile Fusion Studio. A few of the features include application management, setting user and group policies, and support for BlackBerry® Balance™ technology for BlackBerry devices. BlackBerry Balance technology helps add a layer of security and is designed to allow a user to use a BlackBerry device for both work and personal purposes by helping to keep business information secure and separate from personal information.

New Features Contained in the Service Pack 1 Update

Universal Device Service

• Improved iOS 5 support, including new features for Wi-Fi®, VPN, Microsoft® ActiveSync®, and managed app distribution
• iOS enterprise app distribution via web client
• Simplified error messages and notifications for updates
• Enhancements to iOS device enrollment
• iOS 6 compatibility
• Touchdown email configuration for Android devices (requires update to the BlackBerry Mobile Fusion client from Google Play – available today)

BlackBerry Device Service

• Over The Air (OTA) enrollment directly from a BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet. Once enrolled, enterprise configurations such as email, Wi-Fi, VPN profiles, and enterprise applications can be wirelessly pushed to the device
• Full device encryption option as a new IT policy (including personal and work areas)
• Developer mode can be disabled on enterprise-connected BlackBerry PlayBook tablets
• Support for Microsoft ActiveSync certificate-based authentication

Note: Updates for BlackBerry Device Service that involve functionality for managing BlackBerry PlayBook tablets will become functional after the upcoming release of BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1

Regional availability of BlackBerry Mobile Fusion has also been expanded to include additional countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. To find out if it’s available in your country, check the list of BlackBerry Mobile Fusion availability.

Stay up to date and get ready for BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10! Download Service Pack 1 today.

Does your organization embrace a BYOD policy? What are some of the challenges that come along with it? Share in the comments below.

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

TRC Companies, Inc. is an engineering services, consulting and construction management firm that serves a broad range of clients in government and industry. With 2,700 technical professionals and support personnel spread between more than 100 offices throughout the United States, TRC implements complex projects that address business challenges in the energy, environmental and infrastructure markets.

With mobile innovation at an all-time high and a variety of devices available to consumers in the business community, enterprises are now faced with a new challenge – the “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) trend. Employees who use functional consumer devices now want to bring them to work and use them to handle the valuable tasks that businesses expect to be completed at any time and from any place.

Devank Kumar, Manager of Enterprise Systems and Network Security at TRC, understood that the BYOD trend could potentially save the company money in new devices and training, but only if he could meet the challenge of managing multiple mobile Operating System (“OS”) environments in the enterprise. A longtime BlackBerry® smartphone client, TRC wanted to avoid having to deploy multiple Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions that would result in additional costs and training for help desk staff to handle separate interfaces.

The company initially integrated a different MDM provider to manage the BYOD trend but quickly found that it did not offer the appropriate solution that it needed. When Research In Motion® (RIM®) announced BlackBerry® Mobile Fusion in late 2011; TRC Solutions’ Chief Technology Officer requested that the company implement it as soon as it became available as its multi-platform MDM solution.

“Our company liked the assurances that the BlackBerry solution offered,” said Kumar. “We have had BlackBerry smartphones deployed for many years and still manage more than 500 BlackBerry devices on the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, so finding this simple, yet secure MDM solution was really important.”

TRC has started a gradual deployment process of BlackBerry Mobile Fusion to manage its employee’s mobile devices throughout its U.S. offices. The company can now connect its existing BlackBerry Enterprise Server with iOS® and Android™ smartphones and tablets and manage them all from one place, integrating existing BlackBerry Enterprise Server management and security capabilities for iOS and for Android devices.

“It is a logical evolution for companies like us who have leveraged BlackBerry Enterprise Server in the past,” said Kumar. “Rather than require the BlackBerry Enterprise Server to co-exist with an outside MDM solution, BlackBerry Mobile Fusion allows us to maintain all of the benefits of our current BlackBerry solution and evolve with BYOD trends with one MDM.”

This BlackBerry solution will help to avoid the duplication of effort involved with managing multiple platforms separately and prevent the need to train its helpdesk to learn two different systems.

Deploying BlackBerry Mobile Fusion will also mean that the company can avoid dealing with multiple vendors, contracts and support calls. The company can call one number to receive tech support for management on BlackBerry smartphones as well as for other devices.

“It just makes sense,” said Kumar. “Why would we integrate a completely new system that takes time to put through a test environment and train the help desk when BlackBerry Mobile Fusion allows us to move forward with one unified interface and management system?”

Trend Micro™ recently published a report that seeks to address the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend in the workplace by evaluating leading mobile platforms based on security standards and corporate integration. “An increasing number of companies are opening corporate networks and data to consumer mobile technology,” states the report in its Executive Summary. Although “BYOD” may be the buzzword of the year, securing these devices is a major concern for IT administrators – and on the other side it makes perfect sense for employees to seek to bring their own smartphones to work. Their own individual devices have the capability, they’re familiar, and they avoid the dual-device headache that some have faced.

The report published by Trend Micro seeks to inform those facing this trend to ensure that they are able to tackle it effectively, efficiently, and securely within their organizations. Sizes of business vary, as well as industry and information sensitivity, but data security is important to all businesses employing mobile solutions today. And in some cases, keeping data secure can be a make-or-break scenario hinging on retaining a competitive advantage.

The report rates the BlackBerry® 7 OS as having the highest overall rating for security out of all four major smartphone platforms. For example, it was the only operating system with any rating at all for device firewall. Overall, Trend Micro wrote: “Corporate-grade security and manageability make this [BlackBerry] platform the option of choice for the most stringent mobile roles.”

Okay, so it’s secure. But I need features and usability!

This is where many authors stop. The platform is demonstrated as secure, a clear conclusion is presented, and reputable sources cited. However, we know that you and your employees need so much more than this. The underlying issue behind BYOD is that employees want to use the incredible features included in these smartphones: the camera, webmail, Facebook®, Twitter®, LinkedIn®, blogs, and more. Today our mobile phones allow us to be constantly connected to all aspects of our life – including during the 9AM-5PM timeframe.

What we’re looking at here is a set of requirements for a mobile solution within your organization. I’d outline them something like this:

• Supports multiple mobile platforms, allowing use of personal phones for work
• Able to connect these devices to your infrastructure and mail servers
• Includes manageability of your data – remote wipe, provisioning, security measures, and more
• Leaves personal data untouched
• A feature-rich experience, including access to social media, while limiting risk to the company

This isn’t the first time these requirements have been presented. This is what’s happening right now in corporate mobility. It’s also what has been requested of the BlackBerry platform as a trusted provider of mobile solutions with. Here’s what we came up with:

BlackBerry® Mobile Fusion

Strike off number one, two, and three from that requirements list. BlackBerry Mobile Fusion is designed to allow you to support multiple platforms including BlackBerry OS, iOS® and Android™ smartphones and tablets. Secondly, it allows you to connect these devices into your infrastructure to setup corporate mail, IT policies, data encryption, and more. And thirdly, it allows you to set data management policies.

BlackBerry® Balance™

This is where BlackBerry really shines. Most BlackBerry smartphones and the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet include this feature, and this one smashes requirements number four and five out of the park. BlackBerry Balance technology creates a secure perimeter within the OS of a BlackBerry device, which separates work and personal apps, data, accounts, and more. The end user experience is designed to be seamless, and within the inner workings, specific settings can be created to prevent data from passing from the corporate area to the personal. This allows for a full-featured experience for employees who use social media and other personal apps and accounts. It also saves the cost of deploying corporately owned BlackBerry devices if employees have their own BlackBerry smartphones that can be brought into the company network and activated with BlackBerry Balance technology.

Moving forward from here: industry trends, and our roadmap for the future

BlackBerry Mobile Fusion and BlackBerry Balance technology are designed to help organizations cut costs, and minimize security risks while maintaining a great user experience, and to set you up for the future in response to fast-moving trends in business mobility. From here, we do what we do best: closely watch for new challenges around the corner, listen to our business customers to understand what they need, and craft solutions to keep you one step ahead.

In terms of specifics, it was fantastic to hear our CIO, Robin Bienfait, and Alan Panezic, VP of Enterprise Product Management and Marketing at RIM, take the stage at BlackBerry World™ 2012 to make a few exciting announcements. Within the next year, they shared, BlackBerry Mobile Fusion will be offered as a cloud-based solution, as well as via partners as a hosted solution. This will make it even easier to face what’s being thrown at you, simplify deployment, and present major opportunities for our many partners and resellers. We’ll be diving into these announcements to unpack what they mean for you in the coming months. I can’t wait to get started!

What’s one challenge that your organization is facing in terms of mobile devices? Share in the comments below.

Here’s a guest post today from Nader, a BlackBerry® security advisor – enjoy! – Ed.

Many aspects of the BlackBerry solution have been built around manageability. With the advent of consumerization and ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) in the enterprise, the need to manage two personas on the same device has become evident. On one hand, enterprise data and applications need to remain secure and separate from personal content. On the other hand, a litany of consumer apps, emails and personal details must remain private from all, including the enterprise.

BlackBerry® Balance™ technology is our answer to that dual persona challenge. It was launched last year on BlackBerry smartphones running the BlackBerry® 6 OS (and higher) and is now integral on BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS 2.0, allowing employees to use their personal mobile devices for work without compromising the enterprise’s need for security and IT controls. With BYOD, the total cost of ownership for mobility in the organization can decrease, and moreover, employees can benefit from the efficiency of BlackBerry protocols and inherent data compression on BlackBerry smartphones, which can also help to decrease an organization’s mobile data plan costs.

To achieve the separation of work and personal data on a single device, some mobile solutions require employees to allow IT administrators to manage everything on their personal devices. Others create a device “container” or “sandbox” to store business data and run business applications, which can make switching between work and personal applications clunky, confusing and time-consuming for users.

BlackBerry Balance technology is designed to separate corporate and personal data within the operating system, helping to ensure a high level of security with a seamless user experience. BlackBerry Balance technology creates a virtual environment within a single device that supports the concept of Privacy by Design, embedding privacy proactively into technology itself, for both corporations and end users. This allows businesses to help protect their assets while letting employees install their favorite applications.

We’re continuing to support the principles of Privacy by Design and our product cornerstones of security and manageability by developing new tools that anticipate the complexity of your organization’s environment. BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS 2.0 builds on BlackBerry Balance technology as it adds support for both personal and corporate email, contacts and calendar information. The BlackBerry® Device Service in BlackBerry® Mobile Fusion (now available) introduces the ability to manage the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in your organization. With its expanded administration tools, you also have IT policy rules and IT administration commands that allow you to control mobile work data and applications. Future updates of BlackBerry Mobile Fusion will be designed to allow you to manage Android™ and iOS devices, as well as BlackBerry 10 devices when those products launch. You’ll be able to centrally control how any of those supported devices (plus the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet) can access your organization’s environment. This means that as employees bring the latest BlackBerry smartphones and tablets – and other devices -into your organization’s environment, you’ll be able to support a BYOD policy with more confidence and ease than ever before.

How has BlackBerry Balance helped your business face BYOD challenges? Share in the comments below.

A recurring theme to the conversations I’ve been having with people in the wireless industry lately is the need for enterprises to better manage the dual personas of the modern employee: their work persona, and their play persona (my personal favorite persona). The software teams here at Research In Motion (RIM) are aware of this need and are working to address it by providing enterprises with the necessary tools via the BlackBerry® platform. I was able to catch up with Santiago Carbonell, a Handheld Software Product Manager at RIM, who is one of the people working on a new feature coming to the BlackBerry platform to do just that. Check out the interview below!

You’re working on a new feature coming to the BlackBerry platform. What’s the story behind this feature and what does it do?

Over the past 10 years, smartphones have been a huge boon to enterprises because they enable employees to take their work with them wherever they go. In the past few years, however, smartphones have started allowing us to take our personal life anywhere, through things like social networking applications and rich multimedia features.

This has led to a trend we’re seeing in the enterprise space right now, and that’s personal-liable devices, or BYODs (“Bring Your Own Device”). People are buying smartphones for that rich personal experience, but then looking to bring that smartphone into the office to take their work with them as well. What we’re working on is building a platform of coexistence between these two lives on one device.

That sounds cool, but what do you mean by coexistence?

Enterprises understandably need to be very protective of their corporate data and communications, and the BlackBerry platform has always allowed that information to be mobilized securely and efficiently through a robust set of IT policies. These policies allow enterprises to control virtually every aspect of the smartphone, down to whether or not personal email addresses or 3rd party applications can be added. This helps to prevent security no-no’s like data leakage, where confidential information sent to the smartphone via a work email is then shared via a personal email address or through some other application.

However, this means that in the interests of corporate security, some BlackBerry smartphone users can’t add their personal email accounts, access Facebook® or download 3rd party applications. RIM recognizes that enterprise employees are also consumers and we want to stay ahead of the curve by allowing those employees to do their jobs, but also take advantage of all the rich consumer-focused features that are a part of the BlackBerry smartphone.

So, for example, the average employee will be able to respond to that urgent email from their boss, but then a minute later be able to check up on their kids over BlackBerry® Messenger or Facebook, because their employer is comfortable with the security measures protecting their sensitive data.

Exactly.

So it’s a win for the company and the user, because they both get what they want.

Yep. =D Enterprises can then allow employees with their own BlackBerry smartphones to bring them into the office at no cost using products like BlackBerry® Enterprise Server Express. The employee gets access to all their corporate services (work email, work calendar… etc.) and is still able to enjoy using their BlackBerry smartphone in their personal life because the security concerns are addressed.

Without giving away the secret sauce, how is this going to work? Will the BlackBerry smartphone user notice anything different?

Really what we’re working on is keeping the enterprise data where it belongs. That means sensitive information like emails or important business contacts can stay highly secure and controlled. This is all happening in the background of the platform, so the BlackBerry smartphone user won’t really notice anything different. However, if they try to do something their company would deem unacceptable with that data, the platform is designed to help prevent it from happening and notify the user.

Thanks for this! I’m looking forward to grilling you for more information as it becomes available to put on Inside BlackBerry.

No problem!