BlackBerry has announced that it will offer a solution to separate and secure both work and personal data on the two most dominant mobile platforms available today: Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.
BlackBerry’s Secure Work Space will be available on platforms other than the company’s own, as the smartphone maker looks to regain lost ground in the highly competitive mobile market. The Secure Work Space will be managed through BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, and is expected to launch in June.
The solution will include secured client applications for e-mail, calendar, contacts, tasks, memos, secure browsing, and document editing.
The service is said to give iOS users the ability to access data and applications behind a corporate firewall without the need to configure a VPN connection. BlackBerry says Secure Work Space is a “a secure and reliable solution” that it hopes will be the “clear choice for enterprises and governments” by allowing employees to bring their own iOS and Android devices into the corporate workspace.
Closed beta testing for Secure Work Space has already started, and is expected to be offered in general availability by the second quarter of this year. More details are said to be on the way at the BlackBerry Live conference in May, to be held in Orlando, Fla.
Once a dominant player in the industry, BlackBerry has fallen dangerously far behind other platforms in both the government and enterprise markets. The company has recently pinned its hopes for survival on the BlackBerry 10 platform.
