PlayBook for business: show me the money
RIM showed off what consumers see as the missing pieces for the PlayBook at its BlackBerry World conference today; email that's not in a Web page or coming over Bridge from a BlackBerry and BlackBerry apps (and indeed Android apps) running on the tablet. Both of those run in what RIM calls 'players' - Java environments that run on QNX - and they're both still under development; the Android player doesn't support multi-tasking yet although that's the aim. It also demonstrated a huge advantage over new partner Microsoft; it's talked the carriers into only approving radio updates so it can push out upgrades to the PlayBook OS as often as it likes (every two weeks if it wants to - we've had the update to speed up Flash delivered today already). But a couple of points from this morning suggest that while business users might also be waiting for those features, business IT teams have a very different view.
'What's the main thing stopping you switching to tablets?', RIM asked enterprises. The answer, according to co-CEO Mike Lazaridis, is all about money; CIOs told RIM that the biggest roadblock to deploying tablets in the enterprise is what happens if they're lost or stolen. Mostly that's a security question; can you remotely wipe the enterprise data you're letting employees use on them? At some point PlayBook will connect to the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and you'll wipe it like a BlackBerry, but Bridge is the shortcut to that; by restricting email to the already managed BlackBerry and just viewing it on the PlayBook you avoid all those worries - and the cost of managing two devices for each user.
Then there's the cost of buying the tablets in the first place (and paying to replace them if they get lost). IBM can help with that; for the first time, IBM VP Kevin Cavanaugh announced, IBM Global Financing will offer low interest financing for enterprises buying tablets. Suddenly, tablets are something the IT team can just add to an existing purchasing arrangement instead of setting up a new finance arrangement. If you want tablets to be a strategic part of how your business delivers technology, you're not going to assume enough employees will buy their own. Getting the PlayBook into corporate purchasing agreements could be the tipping point for getting it into business.
Mary Branscombe