RIM To Offer Multiplatform Device Management

Aryden sends this quote from an IDG News report: "Research In Motion is taking on mobile device management for Android and Apple iOS devices as well as its own products, introducing the BlackBerry Mobile Fusion product, on Tuesday. BlackBerry Mobile Fusion is designed to simplify the management of phones and tablets that run RIM's current BlackBerry OS and the emerging BBX platform, which is based on the QNX software that currently powers RIM's PlayBook tablet. But Mobile Fusion will also manage devices using the two biggest mobile OSs, Android and iOS."

Late march?

[Lev13than]

RIM also announced that Mobile Fusion is in early beta testing and will be released in "late March [latimes.com]". Not trying to flame here, but does anyone seriously believe RIM's ship date projections any more? Have any of their devices or software packages shipped on schedule in the last two years? Here's hoping that they've learned how to calculate an appropriate Scotty Factor.

Re:Why would IT departments

[AdamJS]

It's transitional (or rather, I assume, coexistent) software for businesses that are already using RIM's offerings. A gamble to keep them sort of under their same umbrella under the guise of "it's part of our overall cohesive ecosystem so it'll work better than option X."

Too late

[pudding7]

20 minutes ago I powered down our BES for the last time. Got all my Blackberry users over to iPhones and Android two months ago. It felt so good knowing that my last annual support payment was the final one. It really wasn't even me driving the migration away from Blackberry, it was my users basically demanding iPhones and Incredibles. Nobody here has cared about a RIM launch in ages.

Re:What? So I can enjoy service interruptions?

[narcc]

What's with all this "RIM is unreliable" nonsense? Apple's MobileMe has been down more this year that RIM has in the last 10. They've had 3 outages in the last decade, the longest being the most recent (still less than a day for most users). Even then, most of their users were completely unaffected; many of those affected only experienced some slowdowns. Oh, and RIM didn't lose a single message.

RIM is more reliable than your service provider. Hell, the electricity in your house is more likely to go out than RIM's services.

So, when was the last time any decent technology company had a three day outage? Well, I don't know about three days, but in 2008 Apple's MobileMe service was out for 18 days -- and that's a $99/year service! iCloud and Siri have also already experienced outages -- WTF?

Google also suffers from outages, again, far more often than RIM. All things considered, RIM is the only company that you can seriously rely on to provide consistent service.