Is BlackBerry Mobile Fusion the future of RIM?

There are no more sacred cows in Waterloo, Ont. And when the last bovine is led out to pasture, Research In Motion's just-launched BlackBerry Mobile Fusion could be seen as the product that started the much-needed revolution.

As RIM aims to put the brakes on its long slide from the top of the smartphone market, it's abandoning a number of old assumptions that were once considered sacrosanct.

Under ex-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, the company's technology lived in its own virtual world, with scant attention paid to rising competitors like Apple's iOS or Google's Android. Alternative platforms were barely acknowledged, let alone connected with.

That stubbornness cost RIM dearly, as its our-way-or-no-way philosophy was increasingly at odds with a changing enterprise market. Companies are gradually shifting away from having their IT departments centrally purchase and deploy fleets of devices to their staff — a methodology that aligned nicely with RIM's core BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES)-based management methodology.

During the BlackBerry's heyday, RIM used its BES technology to convince once-wireless-wary IT decision-makers to add mobility to their environments. By plugging a BES into the existing network, IT could easily add mobile messaging to existing email services. Just as critically, BES allowed administrators to securely control every employee's BlackBerry.

The rise of BYOD
All of that is now changing thanks to a bring-your-own-device movement that increasingly sees employees buy their own devices, then approach IT to connect them to corporate resources. And as they increasingly buy iPhones and Android handsets, corporate IT is finding it harder to justify continuing to buy and support RIM-only BES technology as they're being challenged to manage an ever more diverse client environment.

This shift in technology reduces the need to buy a BES and makes it easier for competing management tools from companies like Fixmo, Good, MobileIron and Sybase to make inroads. Unlike RIM's offerings, third party solutions are typically platform-agnostic, which allows IT to manage a wider range of devices. Market erosion notwithstanding, the mobile device management (MDM) market is probably more pivotal for RIM, than it's ever been, as losing IT customers who once loyally stocked their data centres with BES devices makes it that much harder to win them back later on.

Fusing a more cooperative future
Enter BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, a software package designed to allow administrators to reach out and touch mobile handsets and tablets, even if they don't have a RIM logo. It's just like a BES, only now it plays nice with the competition, as well.

The product, first announced alongside the PlayBook OS 2.0 launch, was officially launched yesterday. RIM's VP of Enterprise Product Management and Marketing, Ian Panezic, said the new offering "allows organizations to manage a mixed environment of devices in the most secure, simple, and cost efficient manner possible. It also means that businesses and government do not have to move to the lowest common denominator on security for all the devices they need to manage."

Allowing IT to have — and eat — its security cake will be pivotal to RIM as it refocuses its efforts on the enterprise. Managing heterogeneous devices can drive support costs up and force uncomfortable compromises in end-to-end security as IT works to make common management tools fit with often incompatible mobile technologies. Like it did with the BES over a decade ago, RIM is hoping corporate buyers will buy into its one-stop philosophy and see BlackBerry Mobile Fusion as the only solution they need no matter what devices their employees choose to carry.

A BlackBerry-less future?
This strategy recognizes that the value proposition for RIM may not necessarily lie in selling handheld devices at all. It already makes industry-leading margin from services and licensing, so it's no great loss to cede the profit from iPhone and Android device sales as long as it can own the subscription revenue from long-term management of those devices.

Like so many other aspects of RIM's recovery effort, there is no guarantee that any of this will work. Even Heins acknowledges how much risk the company now faces, and it would be foolish to assume that one product alone can realistically turn things around. But as a signal of a changed RIM, an example that the impenetrable walls that once separated the company from its customers are now beginning to crumble, BlackBerry Mobile Fusion serves as a rare bright spot. It illustrates a willingness to try things that once would have gotten engineers and sponsoring executives shown the door, and an agility that, if it is similarly infused into future products and services, could form the foundation for a changed, rejuvenated organization.

The sacred cows may be gone, but in their place we're beginning to see the ingredients of RIM's future. History will view BlackBerry Mobile Fusion as the product that kickstarted the transition.

Carmi Levy is a London, Ont.-based independent technology analyst and journalist. The opinions expressed are his own. carmilevy@yahoo.ca