SAIC Renews Investment in Blackberry with BES10

BlackBerry (BBRY) customers may be abandoning the technology in droves, but a few are sticking around. One such company is Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), which, according to BlackBerry, has upgraded its BlackBerry Enterprise Servers to BES10 to manage both its BlackBerry 10 devices and its devices running Android and Apple (AAPL) iOS.

While enterprise mobile users continue to migrate to Android and iOS-based mobile management systems, SAIC is utilizing BES10 for all of its mobile devices, even those running competing operating systems. SAIC is utilizing Secure Work Space for iOS and Android through the BES10 system to manage corporate data for all of its mobile devices through a single platform. The resulting multi-platform solution effectively adapts BES10 to work with more popular mobile OS security measures in addition to BlackBerry 10 devices, the company said. 

“Implementing BlackBerry’s BES10 server provides us with a single management point to support mobile device communications,” said Robert Fecteau, SAIC’s chief information officer in a prepared statement. “This helps reduce overhead costs and allows us to focus training and development on enhancing skills needed to fully support secure mobility operations within the SAIC enterprise.”

Although the name BlackBerry often cues up images of doom and gloom for the former mobile giant, fortunes have been more favorable for the company since new chief John Chen took the helm, with the company seeming to stabilize. BlackBerry’s efforts to focus on enterprise look to be paying off, as the company recently announced it had secured Full Operational Capability (FOC) to run on U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) networks from the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) for the Blackberry 10 platform—a first for any vendor within the channel. The company also reported decreased losses for fiscal Q4 2013 in March, showing that Chen’s efforts to stem BlackBerry’s demise are having an effect. BlackBerry plans on releasing BES12 later this year as a way of unifying its BES5 and BES10 mobile device management programs.

“BES10 gives customers the power to create a customized EMM environment that reflects the diverse security and flexibility needs across their entire workforce,” said John Sims, President of Global Enterprise Services at BlackBerry. “SAIC will gain the advantage of BlackBerry’s comprehensive solution that brings everything together, efficiently and securely, while still providing the best value.”