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 »

Building on what we’ve already shared about the BlackBerry Balance experience on BlackBerry 10, Donny and Vivek have put together a new look at how the experience allows you to flow seamlessly between work and personal use. Work data is kept safe and secure, without compromising your experience. Regardless of whether you switch to work or personal areas of the device, currently running applications are not interrupted, allowing for intelligent multitasking between apps for personal use and apps that are connected to your corporate data. Check out the video below for a quick demo:

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

BlackBerry Balance changes the game when it comes to using one device for both work and personal aspects of your life. Say goodbye to your second phone – with the separation of work and personal data while retaining a unified experience, administrators don’t need to lock down any of the functionality that you love, and you can utilize incredible business applications to get access to corporate information and files. It boosts productivity and allows your phone to switch gears as quickly as you do on a day-to-day basis.

When in the work perimeter of the device, you can access BlackBerry World for Work, which is a version of BlackBerry World designed specifically to allow you manage your installed work applications that have been provisioned by your administrator, or apps that have been recommended by your administrator for optional download.

How would access to both personal and work features on a single device positively impact your daily work and play? Share in the comments below.

It’s been an honor to be a part of conversations with enterprise customers during a major transition for Research In Motion® (RIM®). We’ve had many valuable questions sent to us, and we’re taking the opportunity to get answers from Robin Bienfait, Chief Information Officer (CIO) for RIM. Robin oversees the Enterprise Business Unit, BlackBerry Operations, Customer Service, and Corporate IT functions. In short, she plays a major role in leading the vision for BlackBerry enterprise solutions, and the execution of making that vision a reality. Check out our chat below:

Hi Robin, thanks for joining me today! I’m looking forward to representing our enterprise customers and voicing the questions that they have.

My pleasure Luke, it’s both a challenging time and a very exciting time for us at the moment, and I’m glad I can help to address our customers’ concerns directly.

Can you tell me a bit about your background and the role that you play with our enterprise customers?

Our customers are the reason we do what we do every day. My job is to meet customers where they’re at and help bring solutions to them that work best for their environment. I spent 22+ years at AT&T through all sorts of engineering and network operations leadership roles. When I left AT&T to join RIM over 5 years ago, I had led 30,000 people all dedicated to building a scalable and reliable enterprise class network. During that time, I interacted with enterprise customers on a daily basis, as I continue to do today. I believe it’s important to get to know the different pieces of a business – it’s not just about being a leader, it’s about getting involved in problems and solutions. I am 100% committed to using my experience, knowledge, and dedication to meet the needs of our enterprise customers – that’s what I’m here for.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry for Business Blog »

The private BlackBerry App World™ Enterprise app solution has officially arrived with BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS 2.0! This solution is designed to provide a streamlined framework for enterprises to deploy mobile applications for BlackBerry PlayBook tablet users within their organization. The enterprise app catalog exists as a private channel within the BlackBerry App World storefront on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, and offers a simple way for users to access approved and mandated apps that are managed by their internal IT department.

The growing trend in the enterprise space towards enabling a mobile workforce has meant the deployment of mobile apps, and the subsequent need and opportunity to streamline and organize the tools available to employees. Consistency and optimization in these apps can bring both efficiency and greater ROI to mobile investments. The Work app catalog in BlackBerry App World helps to make sure that your employees have easy access to enterprise apps managed by your organization – including updates to existing apps that are currently in use within your business.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry for Business Blog »

With more and more businesses embracing the potential of a mobile workforce and the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) to work trend, managing devices is more complex than ever before. Organizations are often finding themselves caught between providing mobile device choice and flexibility to employees and the requirement to manage the devices that have access to the corporate network and the confidential information that is exchanged on these devices. Addressing this challenge, Research In Motion® (RIM®) is introducing BlackBerry® Mobile Fusion – its next generation enterprise mobility solution.

BlackBerry Mobile Fusion helps make managing mobile devices faster, easier and more organized. From a unified interface, a user will be able to manage BlackBerry smartphones, BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablets, and devices that use either the Apple iOS or Google® Android™ operating systems.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry for Business Blog »

The BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet browser is far more than a simple application for viewing web pages. It has been carefully designed to provide an enhanced tablet experience, complete with options for customizing the browsing experience, private browsing, bookmarks management, HTML 5.0, Adobe® Flash® and JavaScript® capabilities, location-aware features, and so much more. Consider this powerful tool to be a window into not only viewing and interacting with a variety of web sites, but to also access powerful enterprise web applications.

There are a number of complete and secure web app solutions that you and your business can take advantage of – apps that are designed to offer new ways to collaborate in real time. Access to your internal enterprise network may also be possible from your BlackBerry PlayBook tablet through supported VPN suppliers.

Research In Motion® (RIM®) has a large number of enterprise software partners in the mobile industry, and we are constantly working with them to deliver apps and access to web-based hosted solutions optimized for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. This means that employees will be able to use existing tools while on the go.

I’m sure at this point you’re looking for examples. Well, here are seven of our favorite enterprise apps that are BlackBerry PlayBook tablet browser-ready!

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry for Business Blog »

Improving collaboration is a key priority for organizations large and small, and one of the most popular applications for enterprise collaboration right now is Microsoft® SharePoint™. With more than 100 million licensed SharePoint users around the world, SharePoint gives organizations the ability to easily collaborate on documents, projects and more.

So you’ve decided to use SharePoint in your organization. Great! Now, to get the most out of your enterprise collaboration efforts, you need to take it mobile. If you’ve ever tried to access your SharePoint portal using your mobile web browser, you may have found that it’s a bit difficult to navigate and doesn’t offer a great level of integration with your phone’s operating system. So what do you do?

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry for Business Blog »

(Originally posted on the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog)

Mobile apps in the corporate environment are more creative and influential than ever, helping businesses work faster, more profitably, and with the kind of efficiency that others envy. Here’s why we think attending BlackBerry® DevCon Americas 2011 can help your corporation go even further and do even more.

1. Understand more about the tools and options. Many of the sessions at the show are designed to increase your know-how and skill base, such as:

• DEV19 – Introduction to the BlackBerry PlayBook Native SDK: Building a Sample Application
• DEV21 – Creating a UI using the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR
• DEV22 – Mobile Application Architecture: How Do I Start?
• DEV23 – So You Think You Understand Mobile Web Services
• DEV29 – Lab: BlackBerry WebWorks Bootcamp for the BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet

2. Learn from another corporation’s success. Nothing teaches as well as a company willing to share their experience, and PricewaterhouseCoopers is offering to do just that. Don’t miss COM01 – Enterprise Application Development Made Easy: The PricewaterhouseCoopers Story.

3. Train with the best. Sign up for training sessions on using Adobe® Flex®, Adobe® AIR® and BlackBerry® WebWorks™ to build apps for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet. Both one-day courses are offered on Monday, October 17 from 9 am to 5 pm and cost $499 USD.

4. Discuss and influence the future. BlackBerry DevCon 2011 features a new series of “Collaboration Roundtables”. GRP04 – Collaboration Roundtable: Native App Development for BlackBerry Tablet OS is your chance to join an interactive discussion and offer feature requests and feedback on the technology roadmap.

5. Get one-stop access to everything and everyone to do with BlackBerry. Weeks of learning on your own can’t compare to three focused days where everything about the BlackBerry platform and technologies and corporate development is in one place. The sessions, labs, speakers, experts and networking opportunities are all here. If you need to tell your boss why you should attend, we’ve made it easy by summarizing it all with this Convince Your Boss Letter!

Make sure you don’t miss out – register now.

Good news for business: The Citrix® Receiver for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet (Citrix Receiver) is now available for beta testing. Download it today from the Test Center on the BlackBerry App World™ storefront.

The Citrix Receiver is enterprise virtualization software that allows users to access virtual desktops (such as Citrix® XenDesktop) on servers running Microsoft® Windows, plus enterprise applications hosted within your organization to allow standalone app virtualization. With the Citrix Receiver, users can open: (1) any Windows software that’s installed on the server you’re accessing; (2) Software as a Service (SaaS), or (3) a web app.( I’m personally looking forward to using the Microsoft® Office® suite and Microsoft® Outlook® via the Citrix Receiver, as well as the Adobe® Creative Suite® of products.) Check out more important features below:

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry for Business Blog »

The next “Paul’s Challenge” that I’ve been waiting to post has arrived, and it’s all about the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet. Let me be honest – even though I have been traveling without a laptop for around 9+ months, there were times that I wished I had one. That changed when I was handed a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. I can definitely say that it has added value to several aspects of my day to day work – but how has it changed my No-Laptop Challenge?

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry for Business Blog »