BlackBerry previews cloud-based solution for managing iOS, Android and BB devices

BlackBerry has used the ongoing Gartner Symposium/ ITxpo 2013 in Orlando, Florida to preview a new multi-platform cloud-based enterprise mobility management (EMM) solution that will enable businesses to secure and manage corporate and personal devices.

With the corporate environment increasingly turning from tightly controlled to bring your own device (BYOD), Gartner predicts that half of employers will require employees to supply their own device for work purposes by 2017. At the same time, Gartner also predicts that through 2014, employee-owned devices will be compromised by malware at more than double the rate of corporate-owned devices.

In this light, BlackBerry's new cloud-based EMM solution, which needs no hardware or software to install, allows administrators to manage and secure smartphones and tablets using a Web-based admin console that provides activation and deployment of BlackBerry, iOS and Android devices, app management, security policy configuration and compliance monitoring.

Administrators will be able to build a catalog of public apps from the Apple App Store, Google Play and the BlackBerry World storefront, and then view app distribution and usage for all users and devices. End-users will be able to perform common management tasks such as setting up or changing device passwords and remote wipe and lock without relying on an administrator.

"BlackBerry is evolving. As the industry has adopted BYOD and mixed mobile environments, we've responded with our multi-platform EMM solution," said Stephen Bates, Head of the Enterprise Business Unit at BlackBerry. "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."

Closed beta testing for the new cloud-based EMM solution is already underway. 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.