Last year, BlackBerry and Samsung announced a partnership that would see BES12 help to provide security for Samsung’s Knox on Galaxy smartphones. This, was to help Samsung creep into the Enterprise World, whilst helping to resell BlackBerry Enterprise Services to their customers. Overall, I don’t know if this would be a yay or nay, but BlackBerry does need every single sales that it can grasp.
“The word ‘consumer’ in the consumer electronics world tends to put us into a bracket which perhaps polarises us as a consumer electronics company only,” Paulo Ferreira, director of Enterprise Mobility at Samsung Electronics SA told Fin24.
Security pressure
The company has been under pressure over security and even BlackBerry CEO John Chen dismissed the South Korean manufacturer’s Knox platform.
“While we applaud Google and Samsung for their plans, we don’t think it’s enough for security-minded enterprises. Instead, look to companies that have literally invested three decades into advancing the twin causes of security and productivity. In other words, don’t be dazzled by those who can talk the security talk.
“Instead, look to the company that has proven repeatedly it can walk the walk,” Chen wrote on the official BlackBerry blog in the 2014.
The partnership between Samsung and BlackBerry will see BES12 used to manage Knox in the corporate environment and add significant security improvement to Samsung smartphones.
One feature highlighted is the ability for enterprise IT managers to allow corporate identities to run alongside consumer applications on a single device, reminiscent of BlackBerry Blend which debuted with the BlackBerry 10 operating system.
“With the device being used in the enterprise type of environment, Samsung is most definitely an organisation that’s focused on enterprise and obviously is looking at adding value to our customers in the enterprise as well,” Ferreira said.
For its part, BlackBerry said that security must be native to an application as opposed to an attempt to ring fence critical applications and platforms.
Verification
“From a security perspective which is my backyard, we’ve realised from an early stage that security needs to be built into our product,” Nader Henein, responsible for Advanced Security Solutions, at the Advisory Division at BlackBerry told Fin24.
He said that the company’s platform relied on verification for security, rather than trust.
“I meet with government officials, policy makers, banking and finance customers who remind me time and time again that they’re in the business of security, not trust.”
Derrick Not Registered
Posted: July 8, 2015 at 3:02 PM EST
“One feature highlighted is the ability for enterprise IT managers to allow corporate identities to run alongside consumer applications on a single device, reminiscent of BlackBerry Blend which debuted with the BlackBerry 10 operating system.”
That should read BlackBerry Balance, not Blend. BlackBerry Blend is the application that brings your BlackBerry to your desktop. It is wholly separate and has nothing to do with BlackBerry Balance.
Nick Not Registered
Posted: July 16, 2015 at 3:21 PM EST
I can see BlackBerry licencing BB10 to Samsung. I can see why Samsung can use a secondary OS. This would be a huge opportunity for Samsung to offer the complete secure End to End solution to the Enterprise. A Samsung running full QNX powered BB10 OS would motivate raw native BB10 development.