BlackBerry Security vs Apple's Appstore - Will the PlayBook vs iPad split IT and Business?
2010/09/30
There is no question that mobility and highly mobile devices will play a key role in insurance, both for customers but also as a means for conducting business. Apple have created a great deal of press with their iPhone and iPad products and are now making headway into insurance companies. Indeed in the last two weeks in the UK it was announced that Lloyds of London are now trialling iPads to enable electronic processes in a previously heavily paper based environment. Also in conversations with CIOs in the UK, the iPad and iPhone is proving popular with senior executives. Surely then BlackBerry have arrived too late with their not yet released PlayBook? Actually, BlackBerry may have arrived just in time as far as security specialists in insurers are concerned. Most people aren't aware that the key reason BlackBerry is so popular with large corporates is the management and security features built into the platform. We've all read about the incidents where laptops have been left on trains and even read about organisations fined many millions of pounds through data loss events. Apple are investing in this area but are currently far behind BlackBerry in security features. Google's Android platform is even further behind. It may well be that internal security teams are banking on PlayBook's success as a way of delivering something iPad like to an organisation but retaining the necessary controls and measures to avoid significant embarrassment to the organisation. So the race is on. Will Apple secure their first mover advantage and build in enough enterprise level requirements to their platform in time or will BlackBerry's strong history in enterprise solutions allow them to recapture lost market share?