BlackBerry and Samsung team up on new IoT solutions

Photo courtesy of itbusiness.ca

Article courtesy of Eric Emin Wood, IT Business.ca

TORONTO. - Former mobile device giant BlackBerry Ltd. is extending its partnership with present mobile device giant Samsung Electronics Ltd. on a series of what the companies are calling “Enterprise of Things” solutions.

According to a press release issued Wednesday, the companies’ new “multi-year strategic relationship” will involve combining BlackBerry’s security and endpoint management solutions to Samsung hardware including mobile phones, tablets, wearables, and desktops.

“One of the first outputs of this partnership will be that joint enterprise customers using cutting-edge Samsung devices, such as phones, tablets, wearables, and the Samsung DeX mobile desktop experience, will gain the ability – out-of-the-box – to manage all those devices on a single pane of glass via the BlackBerry Universal Endpoint Management (UEM) platform,” the release said.

The two companies have been working together since 2014, when Samsung began collaborating with BlackBerry on a more secure version of the Android operating system. The companies have also co-developed several enterprise mobility solutions based on the Samsung Knox, BlackBerry UEM and BlackBerry SecuSuite platforms.

“Our clients will not compromise on security and are increasingly demanding integrated end-to-end solutions for digital transformation across their businesses,” BlackBerry senior vice president of strategic partnerships Vito Giallorenzo said in the June 27 release. “In Samsung, we have a partner that fully understands these demands and is moving quickly with us to address them.”

Samsung executive vice president of global B2B services Sean Kae, meanwhile, said the announcement “underscores our focus on delivering large scale digital transformation solutions leveraging the breadth of Samsung’s offerings.”

“With the recommitment to our strategic partnership with BlackBerry, we believe that we will be able to accelerate the technology we bring to the market and transform the workplace together,” Kae said in a statement.