Recent months have seen many corporations distancing themselves from the once prestigious smartphone maker.
Where it was once commonplace for professionals to have a ‘work BlackBerry’ as an additional handset, ‘work Androids’ are becoming far more commonplace.
Nextgov has reported that the Department of Defence (DOD) is moving ahead with construction of a department-wide app store and a system for securing mobile devices, including iPhones, iPads and Samsung smartphones and tablets.
This means it is no longer focused on BlackBerry handsets. The US organization previously owned 470,000 of the handsets, which were used by its staff and personnel. The Pentagon also relies heavily on BlackBerry’s secure e-mail capabilities.
BlackBerry devices were previously the only devices granted ‘authority to operate’ on the Department of Defence’s internal networks, the highest operational integration allowed for mobile devices. The Pentagon was planning to acquire and deploy up to 30,000 BlackBerry 10 devices by the end of 2013 before the DOD moved forward with a new mobile agenda.
"This multi-vendor, device-agnostic approach minimizes the impact of [a] single vendor to our current operations," Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Damien Pickart said. "Implementation of the strategy centres on a "mobile device management" system to track handhelds that touch military networks so that they do not compromise military information or corrupt Defence systems."
A 2012 strategy by the Pentagon to transition personnel from PCs to smartphones and tablets was said to not favour any one device maker, but there seems to be a significant move away from BlackBerry. How the mighty fall.
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