At a Glance
As part of the European Union, this organization works with all levels of leadership within its country’s central government, providing services to every head of state and their agencies. A long-time BlackBerry customer, the organization recently made the decision to sign another contract with BlackBerry, expanding its existing mobility environment to include the BlackBerry® Enterprise Mobility Suite – Application Edition, The ISEC7 EMM Monitoring & Management Platform, BlackBerry® Premium Support Services, and several ISV apps.
The Organization
This major government organization provides IT services to political leadership at every level. Overall, it serves eight different departments, between them a total of over 23,000 end users and more than 30,000 devices. Given the nature of the information within these departments, anything less than the highest level of security is unacceptable.
The organization has put its trust in BlackBerry for nearly a decade. It uses a multitude of BlackBerry applications to secure its mobile and application infrastructure, and also has its own internally-developed custom applications built on BlackBerry® Dynamics, an advanced, mature and proven app container which eliminates the risk of data leakage through sandboxing and encryption. These include a driving app for government VIP drivers and several digital contract apps.
The Challenge
Recently, decision-makers at the agency re-evaluated BlackBerry’s offerings. The goal was to see if anything better had surfaced – if BlackBerry was indeed still the best choice. This is, explains the BlackBerry Account Manager, routine in a high-security industry like government.
“After a certain timeframe, it’s a general best practice to re-evaluate the offerings in the market and hold them up to your current choice,” the Account Manager explains. “Clients in this field are always looking to benchmark, to see if there are better, more secure options.”
With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) around the corner, the agency’s focus on security has become even more pronounced than usual. Decision-makers know that cybersecurity is top-of-mind for all their agency’s clients. They know they need ironclad solutions - but more importantly, they know they need solutions that help their client’s CIOs rather than holding them back.
At the time of its evaluation, the agency was still using Good® for Enterprise, and it needed something better. Like many government agencies, this organization was a large Microsoft customer with several licensing agreements. This meant that it had Intune on the shelf, and that Microsoft was looking to convince the agency to switch.
The Solution
The organization evaluated BlackBerry® UEM, a unified endpoint management and policy control solution which offers both trusted end-to-end security and a single, consolidated management console. It also evaluated BlackBerry® Work, an industry-leading PIM solution that combines enterprise email, calendar, contacts, presence, document editing, and more across devices. Both were compared against Microsoft® Intune and Microsoft® Office.
The agency ultimately chose BlackBerry. Microsoft’s solutions, though formidable, were not government-ready – they did not provide the level of security or feature set the agency required. In particular, the agency cited Outlook’s agenda functionality as being weak compared to that of BlackBerry Work.
“If you look at what BlackBerry Work offers from an enterprise perspective, you can do a great deal with the calendar, emails, and PIM functionality,” says the Account Manager. “The client was really happy with these features and functions – and far happier with the levels of security that came with them.”
With the help of a cross-functional BlackBerry team consisting of representatives from customer success, technical solutions, services and support, the BlackBerry Account Manager supported the agency in migrating the majority of its userbase from Good for Enterprise® to BlackBerry Work. It has also deployed the BlackBerry® Enterprise Mobility Suite – Application Edition, which combines BlackBerry UEM and BlackBerry Work with the BlackBerry® Dynamics SDK, allowing the agency to develop its own secure custom apps.
Alongside this, the agency has deployed the ISEC7 EMM Monitoring & Management Platform, enabling it to monitor its entire mobile infrastructure. Finally, it has purchased 3,000 AppDome® Licenses, signed up for BlackBerry® Premium Support, and been assigned a BlackBerry Premium Service Manager.
“Agency decision-makers understand that true mobile maturity – where you see the most value from mobility – is when you start to mobilize business apps,” the Account Manager explains. “That’s why they’ve purchased these AppDome Licenses. They’re at that stage in their mobile journey.”
The Results
By choosing to continue its mobile journey with BlackBerry, the agency has realized several significant gains:
Seamless Mobile Management: Through BlackBerry UEM, the agency can provide a seamless, integrated admin experience that allows its IT staff to manage both corporate-owned and BYOD users with ease. This in turn leads to greater staff freedom. Government workers can freely use their personal devices in the workplace, secure in the knowledge that they are not putting sensitive data at risk.
Superior Support: Through BlackBerry’s Premium Support Services, the agency can better monitor and manage its mobile infrastructure, potentially preventing costly downtime. A BlackBerry Premium Service Manager is fully devoted to the agency’s success, and is available to help with any issues the agency might encounter, regardless of complexity.
Streamlined Business Processes: Through the deployment and development of secure third-party and custom apps, the agency is able to mobilize core processes across all the departments it works with, greatly enhancing its custom app store and giving in-house workers access to a wealth of tools to help them better do their job. Combined with a seamless BlackBerry Work user experience, this ensures every one of the agency’s clients work better, faster, and more effectively.
New Applications and Workflows: Through AppDome’s App Fusion and the BlackBerry Dynamics SDK, the agency can quickly create and deploy secure, custom apps to fit any organizational need. For example, they recently created a workflow app for digital document signing. This allows workers to review and sign important papers while on the road, streamlining what was once a cumbersome, deskbound process.
More importantly, by deploying BlackBerry’s solutions, the agency has allowed a larger percentage of its workers to telecommute from home, greatly reducing transportation costs and time in transit.
Future Plans: Looking forward, the agency has a keen interest in BlackBerry® Workspaces. Though its current roadmap is primarily concerned with finishing the migration to BlackBerry UEM and BlackBerry Work, BlackBerry’s content collaboration solution is firmly on the organization’s radar and has already generated a great deal of interest.
The agency is also interested in BlackBerry® Access and the recent developments around the solution’s desktop functionality on MacOS and Windows, and has expressed interest in using BlackBerry® AtHoc – a crisis communication platform.
Organization Profile
Industry Government
Employees ~1300
Location Europe