Last year most of the articles that were written about BlackBerry mostly referred to the fact that the company was losing customers to Android and iOS devices and platforms. Back in November 2013, a great number of changes began to take place at BlackBerry. A major investment in the company from Fairfax Financial brought in John Chen as the new CEO.
From day one, Chen’s goal has been to bring back the confidence that governments and corporations alike had in the strong security features that BlackBerry offered. Toward this end, a lot of personnel changes were made and the goal was set to move forward back to those feelings of confidence.
Throughout 2013, BlackBerry has put a lot of work into beefing up its BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) 10 software. It appears that the hard work that went into making BES 10 not only the secure platform that is was, but also a cross-platform solution has paid off.
As of the end of last month the U.S. Department of Defense disclosed that it had deployed 80,000 BlackBerry devices. In addition the new Pentagon mobile management system is using BlackBerry Enterprise Server 10.1 as its backbone.
At this year’s Mobile World Congress, BlackBerry announced that several more companies would have their data secured by BES 10 and accessed by using BlackBerry 10 smartphones. The latest two companies to join the group are Daimler AG and Airbus Group.
John Sims, the new president of global enterprise services at BlackBerry, said "Our customers recognize the value that BlackBerry 10 solutions bring to meet the needs of an increasingly mobile workforce and the sensitive nature of data shared across terminals and platforms - requiring the best end-to-end security technology. Companies like Daimler AG and Airbus Group, as do all of our enterprise and government customers, need to share and access confidential information on a daily basis, making smartphone security a key priority. With BES10, security, productivity, communication and collaboration are the pillars for what BlackBerry aims to deliver to its customers."
As one of the world’s leading manufacturers of passenger cars and commercial vehicles, Daimler AG has a need for tough security features. According to Dr. Michael Gorriz, who is Daimler AG’s CIO the security that BES 10 offers is just what the company needs.
He said, “BES 10 in combination with BlackBerry 10 smartphones offers us the safest environment for mobile device management. With BlackBerry Balance technology, we also offer our employees the opportunity to use two profiles on one device – a professional and a private one. While the professional site is controlled and protected by IT, the user receives individual user options in the private section. With this, private services and apps can be used without compromising company data.”
These sentiments were echoed by the regional managing director Europe, Markus Muller when he said, “This investment in BlackBerry’s enterprise mobility solution demonstrates that no other mobile vendor has the same level of trusted and proven security as BlackBerry. More and more enterprise customers are testing and adopting BES 10 and BlackBerry 10 smartphones. BlackBerry has earned enterprises’ trust and business due to our end-to-end multi-platform solution that’s secured at the device, server and network layer. Furthermore, our end-to-end encryption can be integrated into existing IT systems easily and cost effectively.”
Airbus Group is a global pioneer in aeronautics, as well as space and defense-related services. This company has chosen to re-affirm that it has trust in the security and reliability of the BlackBerry platform. It is upgrading its entire BlackBerry mobile fleet to BlackBerry 10 smartphones.
After several months of testing and comparing BlackBerry’s enterprise mobility solution with other offerings currently on the market, Airbus Group’s decision was made to go with the Blackberry platform. The Group is also migrating to BlackBerry’s Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solution.
Among some of the other companies that feel as strongly about the security that BlackBerry can offer include Italian airline AirDolmiti, independent bank Banca Ifigest, one of the world's largest providers of fuel retailing solutions, Tokheim and Vepica among others.
John Chen has made a lot of changes at BlackBerry over the course of just a few months. All indications are that he is only just getting started and we can expect to see many more to come. Hearing news that so many companies are either increasing or embracing their use BlackBerry’s secure platform shows that Chen is moving the company in the right direction.
Edited by
Cassandra Tucker 
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