Blackberry, today, has attempted to show signs of life through an open letter to Enterprise customers. Whether or not customers are willing to accept the letter remains to be seen.
In the letter, BlackBerry's new CEO, John Chen attempts to assure those who choose to read the email that BlackBerry is not quite dead yet, and that the "for sale" sign has been taken down. But, instead of focusing on the BlackBerry devices, Chen focuses on what BlackBerry can do for the Enterprise, suggesting that the new BlackBerry can provide a total MDM and BYOD solution. He also cites various MDM vendors who are suggesting the death of BlackBerry by attempting to entice switching off of BES through webinars and promotions.
What's interesting to me is that while BES has been a BlackBerry-centric solution, it's not been a great one. I've worked with BES a lot in the past and instead of being an ultimate solution, it was only a necessary evil. It's always been hard to work with and buggy, requiring constant monitoring, reboots, and service restarts to enable it to work. Chen should be more focused on getting his development teams to produce a solid product while waiting for the world to come around and take notice of BlackBerry again.
The letter also states that BlackBerry wants to provide MDM for all mobile platforms and not focus solely on the BlackBerry devices. This is a good move for the company, but again, the product has to be solid. There are too many vendors already entrenched in the market with solid solutions and a long history of successfully supporting a wide range of platforms and carriers.
Here's the full letter for you to read through (click for the larger size):
