Blackberry Balance: Finally Someone is Getting Work - Life Balance in a PDAPhone

One thing that Steve Jobs is known for is directly replying to customers' emails with very short responses that leave everyone wanting more. Well I sent him an email once... but sadly I never got a reply so I can't say whether he ever saw it. The subject of my email was recommending for the iOS something that pretty closely resembles RIM's Blackberry Balance... a system designed to keep your personal stuff in your PDAPhone / Smartphone separate from your work stuff. Why should I have to type in a hard password to play Angry Birds??? With an advanced operating system, it should be pretty straightforward to build this type of firewall between the environments. It looks like RIM has gotten the idea and is calling it Blackberry Balance.

Blackberry Balance will effectively give users two phones in one, according to comments by RIM executives. RIM hopes this will slow the steady erosion of its leadership in the corporate segment as Apple's iPhone and Google's Android devices make inroads. IT departments have preferred RIM's Blackberry for its much greater enterprise security, but as senior executives buy their own iPhones and want to carry just one device, IT has been challenged with integrating devices that don't provide the security capabilities that they need to meet corporate IT and security policies. An analysis last year by J. Gold Associates demonstrates just how wide a gap exists between RIM and its fast growing competitors.





My employer has long been committed to the Blackberry for all officially supported mobile access to the corporate network. About 18 months ago, a number of trials began with iPhones with the intention of bringing them into the fold as a supported mobile platform. More recently, trials have also begun with Android devices. The effort would have been much easier if Apple appeared to be committed to the enterprise space, but some moves make the effort challenging. At one point, Apple had added a feature that allowed verification that the device was not jailbroken. This feature was later removed. Our IT security staff are not comfortable with jailbroken devices on the network, and I would think that other organizations would be similary concerned. This feature was a step in the right direction and it baffles me why they would remove it. This is just one example of the challenges faced by IT departments trying to bring iOS devices into the fold. With Android's open source nature, there are even greater challenges to overcome.

RIM's plan is essentially put a firewall between personal and business portions of the device. IT staff will have the ability to remotely wipe the business side while leaving the personal side untouched. Business data will have the ability to be encrypted and password protected, while the personal side of the device will be open. And you can't have a PDAPhone story without "copy and paste" coming up. They have even put a firewall into copy and paste to block copying enterprise data into a personal email. This is the way a modern "converged" device should be designed. I can't wait to see this in action and see if it lives up to its billing.

"There are two fundamental use cases on the smartphone - enterprise and personal. The problem is that they are conflicting," said Jeff McDowell, RIM's senior vice-president for business and platform marketing.
RIM's solution is software called BlackBerry Balance, which will allow corporate IT departments to retain control over data such as business-related email sent via a BlackBerry Enterprise Server, or BES, while keeping the Web browser and an employee's social networking and photographs separate. "We just wanted to create an innovative solution that allows enterprises to manage the corporate data side while at the same time give their employees the freedom to use Facebook and browse the Web and get their Internet email at the same time," McDowell said in an interview late on Friday. He said carriers were now testing Balance and it should be available in North America within two months.

My suggestion to Steve Jobs was very similar. My thinking was that with OSX under the covers, it should be possible to build two worlds. My thought was that a user (or by force via corporate policy) should be able to designate apps that are personal and open vs. apps that are enterprise in nature and secure. This should carry over to email, calendar, contacts, and especially internet vs. VPN activity in the browser. If I want to listen to music, play a game, or check Facebook, I should not have to type in an 8 character hard password. I may want to have a simpler numeric PIN for my personal apps that stays unlocked for a half hour, while my enterprise functions require much more rigorous password security and re-lock itself after 5 minutes of inactivity. It seems completely within Apple or Google's technical ability to build this type of enterprise security into their OS platforms, but do they really want to take on RIM and the enterprise market? RIM is losing share like crazy, largely as a result of Android's rapid growth over the last year. That isn't going to slow down in 2011, and Apple just gained the benefit of Verizon... and will be rolling out their iPhone 5 in mid-year. Blackberry Balance is the kind of thing that RIM needs to keep themselves in this three horse race for PDAPhone market dominance.

Come on Apple! Come on Google! Lets see what you can do to compete with Blackberry Balance!!!

Source: Reuters