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BlackBerry previews new cloud-based mobile enterprise solution

At today's Gartner Symposium, ITxpo 2013, BlackBerry has previewed a new enterprise solution to help businesses secure networks in a world of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies.
Written by Charlie Osborne, Contributing Writer
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BlackBerry hopes to lure enterprise clients that want to make sure corporate and BYOD devices stay secure, by previewing a new mobile solution at today's Gartner Symposium, ITxpo 2013.

The new multi-platform cloud-based enterprise mobility management (EMM) solution will "enable businesses to easily secure and manage corporate and personal devices," according to BlackBerry.

While providing support for multiple platforms and devices, the enterprise-based solution is expected to make the process of controlling bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies while keeping corporate networks secure a less complicated task for IT departments, as well as cutting costs for firms.

BlackBerry's new offering includes mobile device management (MDM), mobile application management (MAM) and security standards.

The solution is expected to minimize the complexity of managing a mobile fleet of different devices, and will eliminate the need for IT departments to purchase servers -- as administrators register online and login to web-based management consoles in order to control the system, deploy applications and enrol new devices. Administrators will be able to build a catalog of public apps from the App StoreSM, Google Play and the BlackBerryWorld storefronts before monitoring app distribution and usage patterns across devices connected through the scheme.

End-users can manage their own devices through self-service consoles.

Stephen Bates, Head of the Enterprise Business Unit at BlackBerry commented:

"BlackBerry is evolving. As the industry has adopted BYOD and mixed mobile environments, we've responded with our multi-platform EMM solution. The new cloud-based EMM solution will bring all the benefits of our on-premise offering, which is trusted by more businesses and governments around the world than any other enterprise mobility solution, to customers as a cloud service that lets them easily manage BlackBerry, iOS and Android devices more cost efficiently than ever before."

The service will be available as a single monthly subscription that covers both the license and technical support, and is expected to be generally available by the end of November 2013.

Gartner predicts that half of employers will require employees to supply their own device for work purposes by 2017, and through 2014, employee-owned devices will be compromised by malware at more than double the rate of corporate-owned devices, which puts device and app management high on the priority list for business and IT leaders alike.

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