BlackBerry Delivers Lowest Total Cost of Ownership? Maybe, But Likely Not

An interesting new study conducted by Strategy Analytics – and commissioned by Research in Motion (RIM) – apparently demonstrates that over the course of one year’s worth of head to head data gathering, managing a mobile deployment using Research in Motion’s BlackBerry Enterprise Platform vs. securely managing non-BlackBerry devices using a “Walled Garden” will lead enterprises utilizing the RIM platform approach to TOC savings of 39 percent over the walled garden approach. In other words, the disparate device walled garden approach turned out to be 39 percent more expensive than using a homogeneous RIM platform approach.

The report and analysis apparently also indicated that the walled garden approach would continue to cost more than the BlackBerry solution in subsequent years. That number is far lower however, with Strategy Analytics estimating BlackBerry running costs after the first year to run about 14 percent lower than using the walled garden approach.

The study was conducted in the United Kingdom, and involved what may or may not be a representative sample of real enterprise users (we’re not really sure what to make of the sample): the study was conducted with a sample consisting of 100 UK government employees using smartphones in an environment running what the British refer to as an IL2 level of security, and considered what Strategy Analytics refers to as generally accepted (or “typical” – as the research company put it) industry best practices for managing those 100 users while providing the right level of security to meet “IL2” requirements.

IL2 is considered to be the minimum security standard for all UK government departments, which includes schools, health departments and local government employees. The ultimate goal was to measure whether the BlackBerry end to end enterprise approach or the walled garden approach would deliver the most secure environment and/or the lowest TCO overall for mobile deployments.

The Numbers…Don’t Add Up

We have some trouble getting our heads around the sample. 100 UK government users, even over the course of a year, doesn’t strike us as offering a large enough sample – one that would provide enough variables, mobile issues, mobile management challenges, or BYOD changes (on the non-BlackBerry hardware end) to provide a true measure of TCO, security, or overall mobile management costs. In a nutshell, the reports compares the well-established BlackBerry approach (using BlackBerry Enterprise Server or BES) to the walled garden approach (most often manifested through BYOD), where any non-BlackBerry device is given VPN access to a secure limited zone on a network and is managed by third-party mobile device management (MDM) software.

We need to note here that the BlackBerry side of the sample group will have been using either BlackBerry OS7 or even older BlackBerry hardware. However, it clearly excludes upcoming BlackBerry 10 (BB 10) hardware, the new BB 10 operating system and related applications, or any of the new backend server software (BES, etc.) that will absolutely be needed if a company moves to BB 10. And in all honesty, we can’t imagine any BlackBerry shop either looking to stay outside of the new BB 10 hardware/software environments. It may be fair to say that old BlackBerry environments might continue to be cheaper, but that isn’t the measurement we’d be most interested in knowing about.

Andrew Brown, Director of Enterprise Research at Strategy Analytics, suggests that "When looking to define a cost-efficient, long-term enterprise mobility strategy, we would caution all organizations across both the public and private sectors to look at the total cost of supporting multiple devices with multiple operating systems over several years."

That is all well and good, but there is more to it than that – such as the measuring of end user (BYOD-driven) productivity, BYOD-driven hardware cost savings through employees picking up hardware costs, and so on. These issues now outweigh simple TCO savings, and we are sure that adding these factors into the equation will bring the 39 percent down to a far smaller differential. Enterprises have already seen this – it is one key reason so many of them are able to move on from BES and a key reason RIM continues to struggle. For subsequent years, the 14 percent Strategy Analytics notes probably becomes a negative number for RIM when these other factors are taken into consideration. Again, we believe that is what most enterprises have already figured out.

High Levels of Security – Important Yes, but Not That Important

Strategy Analytics also assessed the security of the BlackBerry 7, Apple iOS 5, Symbian S60 and Windows Phone 7 operating systems, using eleven key threats as a framework. We need to keep in mind that Symbian is still relevant in the UK – obviously it would make no sense to look at Symbian were this a Northern American sample audience. That said, looking ahead to 2013, we are looking at an iOS 6, Windows Phone 8 and BlackBerry 10 world, and although Europe has a particularly strong suspicion about the security of Android, it will certainly be a player as well. Symbian falls out of the enterprise equation everywhere in 2013.

The BlackBerry solution proved the most secure in the Strategy Analytics analysis, scoring a low-threat level in ten of the eleven categories. The report also found that the end-to-end architecture of the BlackBerry solution, including encryption for data-at-rest and in transit, mitigates the maximum amount of risk and offers essential support for corporate IT policies.

We would hardly look to offer any arguments against the security superiority of RIM’s BES environment. It is commonly acknowledged to be the most highly secure end to end mobile platform available. Period. The problem is that the vast majority of enterprises – at least in North America - have come to the conclusion that the level of security offered by RIM (which has a slew of government security certifications in hand no other vendor can touch) typically exceeds what these companies need on a day to day basis.

Scott Totzke, Senior Vice President, BlackBerry Security Group at RIM points out that "As the only mobile solution to be approved by the UK government to protect material classified up to and including ‘Restricted,” the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution continues to set the standard for mobile security.” We don’t doubt that - when federal defense level security is needed, BlackBerry will still find itself as the go-to vendor. Unfortunately it isn’t a big enough market to sustain RIM as a top three vendor.

"OEMs and device OS manufacturers need to ensure greater technical controls on their platforms to limit platform vulnerabilities and other operating systems have a long way to go before they can be considered viable options," concludes Brown, but in fact this is already the case. Most MDM vendors already offer more than enough security for the typical enterprise, and most device makers are working with the MDM vendors to ensure that this is the case.

Research in Motion is not going to win any business arguing over TCO costs or the superior levels of security at the very highest ends of the spectrum. It simply doesn’t matter to the vast majority of enterprises. RIM needs to let go of yesterday – which is hat this Strategy Analytics report focuses on, and needs to look forward to tomorrow.

RIM needs to deliver some gloriously amazing hardware to go with what is shaping up to be an excellent BlackBerry 10 user experience. It’s that simple; give us the hardware, no one cares about the TCO.

But let’s better qualify that statement: No one will care about RIM TCO or security until RIM’s smartphones (and tablets) can once again truly hang with the big boys at Apple and Samsung, and in looking ahead to 2013, possible Nokia again as well.