Early in December of 2012 we launched the BlackBerry 10 Ready Program to provide businesses around the globe with the tools, offers, and knowledge that they needed to prepare for BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10.

The program includes a free BlackBerry 10 smartphone offer with BES 10 installation and training courses, a license trade up program to help you seamlessly switch to BlackBerry 10 from prior BlackBerry smartphones, a webcast series, and BlackBerry 10 Readiness Services to provide you with a suite of support options for installation and upgrades.

With BlackBerry 10 launching around the world and BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 available for download, let’s take a look at some of the progress so far.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry for Business Blog »

We’re delighted to be sponsoring the 2012 SMB Influencer program yet again, and this year’s Awards Gala is in full swing here in New York City. Influencers and members of the SMB community have come from far and wide to honor their peers and take part in the awards ceremony. Research In Motion® (RIM®) is a huge supporter of small and medium-sized businesses around the world, with smartphones and mobile device management solutions that are affordable and scalable. Over the years we’ve heard some amazing success stories of businesses that have used BlackBerry® solutions to help grow, expand, and communicate with customers and stakeholders.

I’ve managed to catch up with RIM Sr. Director for Enterprise Accounts Bryan Lee here at the event to chat about RIM’s commitment to the SMB community, Bryan’s role and impact at RIM, and the SMB Influencer program. Check it out below for the full scoop!

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry for Business Blog »

For our BlackBerry® business customers in the U.S. and Canada (excluding Quebec): From now until December 31st 2011, you have the opportunity to receive one BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet free whenyou purchase two BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablets from an authorized Value Added Reseller. Additionally, you’ll have the choice of three qualifying accessories to go with each BlackBerry PlayBook tablet (you must choose the same accessory for all three tablets) as a bonus. To take advantage of this offer, head over to an authorized Value Added Reseller and read on for more details. (Terms and conditions apply.)

The Accessories

No BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is complete without its friends – and by friends, I mean a black leather sleeve, charging pod, and a 6 foot high-speed HDMI cable. As mentioned above, when you take advantage of this offer, you’ll have the choice of a single accessory to accompany all three of your new BlackBerry PlayBook tablets, free of charge.

Next Steps

Head over to the appropriate regional site to check out all of the details, to read the terms and conditions, and to see a list of vendors that you can order from. You can also use the VAR locator tool to find a BlackBerry reseller near you (view the North American VAR Locator).

• See the details: United States
• See the details: Canada (excluding Quebec)

Once you’ve got them…

Download some apps! And of course, don’t forget enterprise web apps that can be accessed through the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet browser.

If you’ve never participated in a Twitter chat, don’t fear! We’ve put together a “How To” guide and a few suggestions for best practices:

What is a Twitter chat?

A Twitter chat is an online conversation that takes place among a group of people on Twitter about a specific topic of interest. A hashtag, created by adding the # symbol to the beginning of any word, is used to keep track of the conversation. In this case, we’ll be discussing small to medium business related topics with business owners, and the hashtag we will use to track the discussion is #BBSMBchat. You’ll need a Twitter account to participate. If you don’t have one, you can sign up at Twitter.com.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry for Business Blog »

We recently launched the new Inside BlackBerry Help Blog, which I recommend checking out if you haven’t already for lots of great BlackBerry® tips & tricks. Today, we are pleased to further expand our Inside BlackBerry family and introducing you to the Inside BlackBerry for Business Blog! This will be the place to get information directly from Research In Motion® (RIM) experts on how to optimize your use of BlackBerry in business. This blog is being managed by our Global Business Marketing team, and Roger is here with me today to tell you more about this team and the blog itself:

Who are you and what do you do?

I’m Roger, and for most people this is a fairly easy question…for me, not so much! Having worked at Research In Motion (RIM) for nearly a decade – and in Technology Marketing for nearly 15 years – I have a wealth of diverse knowledge. Recently I’ve found myself focusing more on trying to drive insights from the vast amount of research and expertise we have at RIM in order to help customers manage their wireless initiatives. This certainly manifests itself in social media posts, but more often in whitepapers, conference presentations, and so on.

What is Global Business Marketing’s role at RIM?

We’re a global team focused on all things business. It’s important that we are globally focused, because technology (and mobility) is becoming increasingly de-centralized and globalized. A company deploying BlackBerry® Enterprise Server in France has the same technical and business issues as one deploying in South Africa, and we needed to respond to that similarity.

The team’s mandate is to gain a deep customer understanding how customers can/do best use BlackBerry in business, and to communicate that to both our channel and marketing partners, who can then execute programs more appropriately. To gain this customer intimacy, the team is heavily focused on various means of customer engagement – not only through social media, but things like customer advisory boards, conference participation, and surveys.

BlackBerry has been using social channels to talk to customers for a while now – why start using social tools to communicate with our business customers?

We have found that a number of our ‘fans’ and ‘followers’ were in fact coming from organizations (versus consumers), with unique sets of questions and interests. As this volume grew, it became apparent that our social media strategy should evolve to better meet the needs of this business audience.

What’s the goal for starting the Inside BlackBerry for Business blog? What are you going to be blogging about?

We have a LOT of knowledge about enterprise mobility and want to share it! We’ve been in the wireless mobility business for a while now, so the challenge will be picking topics that are timely and most useful to our audience. To begin with, we’ll be talking about how products can be best used for business, B2B events that our Segment Experts attend, and business insights & trends in mobility.

Can you tell us a bit more about the other social properties that are being launched this month?

It’s certainly been a busy month as we got ready to launch our initial social media properties for business professionals. Beyond the Inside BlackBerry for Business blog, we also recently launched the @blackberry4biz Twitter account But stay tuned as we’re also exploring other properties!

You work closely with the Segment Market Teams. What’s their role within RIM?

We have a robust, deeply engaged team of dozens of experts with specific industry expertise such as Healthcare, Professional Services, and Real estate (to name a few). From a channel perspective, this team – and really all of business marketing – delivers a unique value-add to our carrier/channel ecosystem – a deep customer understanding around business process and wireless enablement.

Each manager is responsible not only for understanding specific customer needs within their vertical, but for turning that information into meaningful deliverables. This might manifest as a carrier promotional bundle to real estate agents, a System Integrator deploying a Unified communication solution in a hospital, or the recruitment/support of new BlackBerry® Alliance Partners.

Why do you LOVE what you do?

My job is wonderfully stimulating mentally and provides both variety and depth. I love the fact that over the years, I’ve been able to deal with a diverse array of projects. Moreover, the analytical/strategic part of my brain cherishes the fact that RIM affords me the ability to dig deep into new topics. I have access to consultants, industry analysts, and thousands of customers. This is a position I’m very thankful to have!