What a week. Hello from the airport lounge at Orlando International Airport….one of the most G*d awful airports in the world IMO. Anyone who flies here regularly can attest to the complete dysfunction that is the security lines. Having completed BlackBerry World 2011, I can finally come up for air. It’s been an incredible few days here with not only the Research in Motion team, but also colleagues, enterprise mobility vendors….and most importantly, enterprise mobility managers.
As you’d expect at such a big event (RIM said this was their biggest event ever), there was a lot of news announced. There was a press release that covered RIM’s decision to make the BlackBerry Enterprise Server able to manage other types of mobile devices beyond those that run the BlackBerry OS. The one thing that literally made everyone gasp during the keynote, was the introduction of Steve Balmer. It reminded me of when Bill Gates was shown on video at Apple’s WWDC (or was it MacWorld at the time?) to talk about that famous $150 million investment. I’m sure some people were expecting some earth shattering announcement…a la the Microsoft/Nokia deal. Instead, Señor Balmer announced that the Bing search engine would become the default search mechanism for all new BlackBerry devices and be used with “deep integration.” (whatever the hell that means)
I read a post the other day from someone (I can’t seem to find the URL) that said this was a sign that Microsoft was hedging its mobile bets because of its lack of confidence in the Windows Phone platform What a load of nonsense. Fortunately, we here are smarter than that.
Microsoft is an IT portfolio company. It has lots of businesses that (un)fortunately do and don’t all align themselves to each other. One need only look at the Bing experience on iOS to appreciate that. But this is not the first time that Microsoft has partnered with competitors, or RIM for that matter. One need look at BES support as the most classic example.
But there’s more. Office 365 is another recent example, and I am sure we will hear more about how RIM will partner with Microsoft on Azure and other cloud services….because it makes perfect sense for the cloud and mobility to co-exist. Let’s not forget that RIM is actually two companies. One is a hardware manufacturer, and the other is a middleware provider. How could RIM not partner with Microsoft? It will of course compete however with Microsoft on devices and mobile operating systems….but there it obviously competes also with Android and iOS. So RIM wanted/need a better search function for the BlackBerry. It had two choices – the other being Google of course. Do you think RIM would partner with Android? Heck no. This announcement is as much an extension of their current relationship with Microsoft as it is a not-so-polite salute to Google…because we can’t forget the classic concept that my enemy’s (in this context) enemy is my friend.
I think we’ll see more and more partnership deals for RIM with Microsoft, as well as more deals all across the board. Perhaps even one day could we see a partnership with Google’s enterprise apps group? Who knows. I only wish I had seen Balmer yell “Developers Developers Developers!!!”
PS: Happy Cinco de Mayo!
0 
0
Holy Partnership Batman! Microsoft and RIM Deepen Their Relationship
As you’d expect at such a big event (RIM said this was their biggest event ever), there was a lot of news announced. There was a press release that covered RIM’s decision to make the BlackBerry Enterprise Server able to manage other types of mobile devices beyond those that run the BlackBerry OS. The one thing that literally made everyone gasp during the keynote, was the introduction of Steve Balmer. It reminded me of when Bill Gates was shown on video at Apple’s WWDC (or was it MacWorld at the time?) to talk about that famous $150 million investment. I’m sure some people were expecting some earth shattering announcement…a la the Microsoft/Nokia deal. Instead, Señor Balmer announced that the Bing search engine would become the default search mechanism for all new BlackBerry devices and be used with “deep integration.” (whatever the hell that means)
I read a post the other day from someone (I can’t seem to find the URL) that said this was a sign that Microsoft was hedging its mobile bets because of its lack of confidence in the Windows Phone platform What a load of nonsense. Fortunately, we here are smarter than that.
Microsoft is an IT portfolio company. It has lots of businesses that (un)fortunately do and don’t all align themselves to each other. One need only look at the Bing experience on iOS to appreciate that. But this is not the first time that Microsoft has partnered with competitors, or RIM for that matter. One need look at BES support as the most classic example.
But there’s more. Office 365 is another recent example, and I am sure we will hear more about how RIM will partner with Microsoft on Azure and other cloud services….because it makes perfect sense for the cloud and mobility to co-exist. Let’s not forget that RIM is actually two companies. One is a hardware manufacturer, and the other is a middleware provider. How could RIM not partner with Microsoft? It will of course compete however with Microsoft on devices and mobile operating systems….but there it obviously competes also with Android and iOS. So RIM wanted/need a better search function for the BlackBerry. It had two choices – the other being Google of course. Do you think RIM would partner with Android? Heck no. This announcement is as much an extension of their current relationship with Microsoft as it is a not-so-polite salute to Google…because we can’t forget the classic concept that my enemy’s (in this context) enemy is my friend.
I think we’ll see more and more partnership deals for RIM with Microsoft, as well as more deals all across the board. Perhaps even one day could we see a partnership with Google’s enterprise apps group? Who knows. I only wish I had seen Balmer yell “Developers Developers Developers!!!”
PS: Happy Cinco de Mayo!