Deploying smartphones in an enterprise environment is a challenging task. Even more with government agencies where security is critically important, where systems often contain highly valuable information from data on individual citizens to confidential state secrets.
According to a report by Strategic Analytics, the BlackBerry Enterprise Server was the first mobile platform to achieve common criteria certification, a category recognized by 25 countries, as well as meeting the security requirements standards in the United States, Canada, and the UK government.
The analysis also cosidered other devices, but only RIM passed, along with Nokia Symbian S60 E5 and E72 using a Walled Garden architecture. The relative strengths and weaknesses of each OS have been assessed and summarised in the following figure:
Following are some of the benefits of the BES solution in corporate environments:
- BlackBerry offered a lower overall TCO across all user counts.
- It generally costs 39% more to deploy non-BlackBerry devices
- BlackBerry running costs after one year are 14% lower
- BlackBerry devices are typically cheaper to buy than other OS Smartphones.
- BlackBerry data plans are on average lower than alternative smartphone plans.
- The corporate network architecture is more simple with a Blackberry solution
In summary, the study concludes that the costs of the BlackBerry solution not only brings the most secure platform but also the lowest total cost of ownership when considering everything.
Source: Strategic Analytics Report Photo: ITLP