When evaluating solutions to enable your business with mobile applications that go far beyond email, calendar, and PIM, the best practice is to ensure you are making the most of what’s available. I’ve worked in this post to establish a benchmark of how BlackBerry solutions can enable business collaboration and enterprise applications with four key elements.

Connectivity

Although this sounds pretty basic, it’s really the core of what’s needed to get things done. When leveraging the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution, this aspect is built in from the ground up and really cannot be any easier. With a service called MDS-CS, you have that built-in “VPN-Like” connection to allow you easy access to the secure data stored behind the firewall. This is a key differentiator, as without this out-of-the-box connectivity behind the firewall, complex and potentially costly solutions would need to be created in order to achieve secure access to corporate data.

Push

Many of us are already familiar with the term “Push”. As a brief primer, push is a service that sends data to a device without the device having to send a request for that data. This is why you don’t have to manually check your email – new messages simply appear the moment that they arrive. It’s a great protocol for delivering information in real time and keeping you connected. But the story doesn’t end here – let’s look at what can be accomplished with Push technology in a business setting.

First and foremost, you have the ability to push data to an app and even notify the end user when something has arrived. Secondly, you can push that information directly to the BlackBerry Hub in BlackBerry 10. Consider how a business user works and the fact that they’re constantly in their inbox. When they wake up in the morning, they go to their inbox; before they go to bed, they are in their inbox. It follows, then, that your business applications should also have a presence here. For example, let’s say that you want to send your CEO the daily sales reports or business intelligence data. Put it right where they’ll be: the inbox! With the invocation framework introduced in BlackBerry 10 you can have them tap on the notification in their inbox and thereby invoke your app.

Secondly, Push also solves the issue that apps need to work offline. Executives often use their BlackBerry smartphones on flights and trips all around the world. Many “send” messages while in transit, and when they land their messages are sent without them even having to lift a finger. Your applications can work the same way; once you build into the workflow a system that can push down the requests to their devices, the requests will be waiting for them until your users have the downtime to go through and take action. They will absolutely love you if you make them more productive on the airplane, and especially if you design it so they do not need to go back to their PC to approve or interact with the information.

Management

Beyond building your enterprise app, it’s important to consider its deployment within your organization. With BlackBerry 10 we’ve created the App World for Work, which gives you the ability to host your confidential application behind the firewall, accessible only to employees within your business. This is enabled as soon as the device is activated against BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, when the BlackBerry Balance feature comes alive during device activation. You can then make it available through App World for Work and the employees can download it, or you can make it a mandatory application which will then automatically be pushed to employee devices. Employees also have the ability to manage available upgrades within App World for Work to ensure that the latest maintenance releases and enhancements are available.

If you’re building applications which you’re looking to sell to enterprise customers, you can either provide them the application to host in their environment or you can submit your application to BlackBerry App World and simply recommend that your customers flag the application for work. Administrators can select publicly available apps from BlackBerry App World, which makes the application appear in App World for Work as a recommended download for employees, manageable like any other internal applications.

Standards-based Development

Let’s face it, when building applications for mobile devices there are many different tools and languages available, and it can be daunting to make a selection. Even some of the MDM providers who try to enable enterprise applications require you to learn their tools in order to build, manage, and secure mobile applications. With the security elements already built into the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution, all that is left to do is build the app. We’ve made it easier than ever by supporting standards-based development. First with HTML5, CSS and JavaScript, you can write and in many cases reuse samples of code which can then be compiled with our BlackBerry WebWorks tool to create a BlackBerry app. Aside from being simple to build, the beauty of the BlackBerry WebWorks development solution is that it supports BlackBerry 6 and BlackBerry 7 OS, BlackBerry PlayBook tablets, and the upcoming BlackBerry 10 platform. You can also go really deep to create customized extensions that leverage the core of the BlackBerry OS and hardware. We’ve got loads of samples for you to check out on http://developer.blackberry.com/

If you go a step further and would like to develop using our Native Software Development Kit, the core of the language is C++. Combined with our Cascades tool, you can build some serious applications that not only increase productivity at your company, but have a beautiful interface.

When you’re evaluating solutions to solve your business problems, take a look at Connectivity, Push, Management, and Standards-based Development to see how they can help you in your quest for designing and implementing functional and intuitive business apps. The Enterprise Partnerships team here at RIM is ready to help!

[Image © Copyright Albert Bridge and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons License)

It’s clear that those who use BlackBerry® smartphones and BlackBerry® PlayBook tablets like to get things done. As RIM CEO Thorsten Heins shared during the BlackBerry World™ 2012 keynote, “BlackBerry is about saving time, and it’s about success.” We’re people who like to think ahead and enjoy feeling prepared – whether it’s with the right information heading into a meeting or, as I’m discussing today, being ready for the unexpected.

Fire departments, regional police, and community programs have long proposed the idea of having an emergency plan for your family and home. In business, we have the concept of business continuity to stay cool and collected in the face of any number of unfortunate incidents. Your BlackBerry smartphone – and a ton of fantastic apps – can help accomplish these goals both at home and at work. Let’s take a look at how you can stay prepared for emergencies.

Connectivity

I once had a member of government speak to me on Twitter® about how he was able to use his BlackBerry device to coordinate emergency efforts during mass flooding. There are countless other examples of this, such as right here in Ontario when the city of Thunder Bay declared a state of emergency – BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) and social networks were used to help coordinate and help those without food, water, or shelter. The connectivity of BlackBerry smartphones helps to keep you in touch with those who matter — not just when you’re having fun, but also when things go sideways and having a connection is critical.

Plans and Checklists

Planning ahead is the real key to being prepared for emergencies. Since you carry your smartphone with you most places that you go, what better place to contain that plan for quick reference? You can work through the many guides and templates to create your own emergency plan and then store it for access via Documents To Go® or Adobe® PDF Reader, or you can leverage the many emergency-focused apps available in the BlackBerry App World™ storefront. For example:

• Federal Emergency Management Agency app
• Business Emergency Checklist
• In Case of Emergency (ICE) Emergency Medical Info and Contacts
• Emergency Information (by AppsForBB.com)
• Emergency Information (by Vimukti Technologies Pvt Ltd)

Business Continuity

Business continuity helps your organization ensure that critical functions can continue in the face of disasters, emergencies, or unexpected shifts due to uncontrollable circumstances. If your organization hasn’t yet considered implementing a plan for this, don’t delay any further. The Business Continuity Institute states in their 2012 Q2 magazine that in a survey of industrial industries, “only 53% of respondents were confident that they could recover quickly in the event of a disaster.” (2012 Acronis Disaster Recovery Index)

Mobility should be a key aspect of this type of planning, as rapid and secure communication is critical to successful execution. If you have a business continuity plan, it shouldn’t be in a binder in the bottom drawer, but accessible from wherever you are. The plan can be stored on your intranet, as local documents on your BlackBerry smartphone or BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, or can even manifest as a custom app deployed by your business.

Many business continuity plans contain emergency contacts that need to be immediately notified of the situation. Consider labeling these in your BlackBerry smartphone’s address book, or even creating a BBM group for mass communication even in the event of your mail server kicking the bucket.

Protect your infrastructure

Lastly, it’s important that your technology, and the investments that you’ve put into it, stays in secure working order. Backing up data off-site is one of many best practices for ensuring the integrity of your digital assets. BlackBerry Technical Support Services can also help if you’re an enterprise using BlackBerry Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions. This can include relationship-based support with regular visits by a technical resource.

I’ve only discussed the tip of the iceberg here in terms of how you can stay prepared for emergencies both at home and at work. What are your ideas? How does your smartphone factor into your plan to face the unexpected?

This year, Research In Motion® (RIM®) sponsored the 2012 SMB 150 awards coordinated by SMB Nation. These are the second annual SMB 150 awards, which seek to recognize top performing small and medium-sized business technology partners based on both community voting and a panel of judges. The awards have come to a close and the winners have been announced on the SMB 150 website.

It’s been our pleasure to work and partner with small business communities to solve challenges around mobility, and to help businesses grow and succeed. Last Wednesday, Bryan Lee, Senior Director, Enterprise Accounts and I attended the awards gala for the 2012 SMB 150 awards and we were very excited to meet this year’s winners, including international winners who traveled all the way from Brazil, the U.K. and Australia to receive their awards. We enjoyed chatting with the winners and attendees in person to explore their unique perspectives on small business and technology. My most memorable moment of the evening was when one of the award recipients’ accepted his award from a remote location via BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet video conference.

My personal favorite tool that we’ve put together is the SmartBuilder for BlackBerry. SmartBuilder pieces together a personalized mobile solution set based on your business needs, which you can input by taking a short survey within the tool. We’ve had fantastic feedback and are often working to improve our offerings for the SMB community, so please share what the specific challenges and successes have been for your business this year!

Also worth taking a look at in order to take your SMB to the next level are the following:

• BlackBerry® Enterprise Server Express (free)
• BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablets to save costs and enable a mobile office
• BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) for both internal communication and Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• BlackBerry® Business Cloud Services to help integrate your Microsoft® Office 365 service and your BlackBerry smartphones

How has your SMB leveraged BlackBerry smartphones, tablets, or services to help grow your business and handle communication, collaboration, or CRM? Share in the comments below!

Hello BlackBerry® for Business Blog readers! We’re pleased to let you know we have expanded our social media presence with the launch of a new LinkedIn group. The BlackBerry® for Business group is the first official LinkedIn community from Research In Motion® (RIM®).

This community is an information and discussion hub for business users and decision makers. It’s a great venue to contribute best practices, advice, case studies and general knowledge as it relates to the BlackBerry platform in your industry. There will also be a good volume of discussion around the latest trends in mobility, computing and IT solutions.

The RIM team will be on hand to serve up discussion topics, add to the conversation and provide subject-matter expert’s opinions and answers where needed.

Join the BlackBerry for Business group today and invite your colleagues! We look forward to connecting with you and hearing what you have to say.