An anonymous director reports

GLOBAL CUSTOMERS CHOOSE BES12 CROSS-PLATFORM EMM BY BLACKBERRY

Bombardier, American Crane, Home Hardware and Rocco Forte are among a group of global customers that are migrating to BlackBerry Ltd.'s new BES12, a cross-platform EMM (enterprise mobility management) solution by BlackBerry, available Nov. 13, 2014. BES12, which can be deployed on premise or in the cloud, is the foundation for a new generation of enterprise security, productivity, and communication and collaboration services that will help organizations securely connect employees with content, apps, devices and machines.

BlackBerry was named a leader and achieved the top score in EMM strategy in the Forrester Wave: Enterprise Mobile Management in the third quarter of 2014. As the leading EMM provider, BlackBerry customers include all G7 governments, 16 of the G20 governments, 10 out of 10 of the largest global enterprises in each of the pharmaceutical, law firm and automotive industries, and the top five largest oil and gas companies in the world.

BES12 provides expanded EMM capabilities that can manage any mobile deployment model such as BYOD (bring your own device), COPE (corporate owned, personally enabled) and COBO (corporate owned, business only), and leverages BlackBerry's trusted global infrastructure. The BES12 platform seamlessly supports iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry OS. Key benefits of BES12 include:

• Comprehensive cross-platform EMM -- provides complete management and security for devices, applications and company data across all major enterprise device platforms and all tiers of device ownership and deployment models;
• End-to-end security -- leverages advanced encryption, containerization, application wrapping and BlackBerry's secure global infrastructure; provides end-to-end, platform-level security that keeps an organization's data safe and secure while in transit and at rest;
• Scalable architecture -- scalable up to 25,000 devices per server and 150,000 devices per domain; BES12 is designed to reduce deployment cost and complexity and ensure maximum uptime with support for active-active high availability; it can be deployed on premise or through a private cloud, and will soon be available via hybrid or public clouds;
• Streamlined user experience -- enables administrators to holistically manage all users, devices, policies and profiles natively from one easy-to-use unified console; a new attribute-driven end point management model enables more flexible management of devices, applications and data; comprehensive reporting and dashboards simplify the management of complex fleets of devices;
• Industry-leading total cost of ownership -- the recent study by Strategy Analytics, Enterprise Mobility Management: A Review of Total Cost of Ownership, found that BES is the lowest-cost EMM solution based on the five-year total cost of ownership; the study found that migrating from BES5 to a BlackBerry competitor is, on average, more than double the cost over five years than migrating from BES5 to the next generation of BES;
• Design for Internet of things -- BES12 is the first BES platform that will extend beyond smart phones and tablets to support the management of things, including medical diagnostic equipment, industrial machinery and automobiles;
• Global support -- all BES12 subscriptions include industry-leading BlackBerry technical support services to help manage the complexity and demanding requirements of mobility and evolving EMM strategies.

Nearly 100 companies from a number of industries and regions have already deployed BES12 as part of BlackBerry's enterprise prerelease program. Here is what a few of them have to say.

Bombardier -- the world's only manufacturer of both planes and trains

Bombardier is evolving mobility worldwide by answering the call for more efficient, sustainable and enjoyable transportation everywhere.

"We trust in BlackBerry's long-standing reputation in mobile security and realize that's why the world's most-eminent organizations and governments depend on their mobility platform. As mobile computing continues to redefine business, and empower employees to collaborate, transact and innovate in entirely new ways, we are confident that BES12 will help simplify the way mobility is managed. And the ability to extend BlackBerry's security across multiple device platforms, including Windows Phone, iOS and Android, is of particular interest to us as we are managing complex BYOD environments," said Jean Pierre Bourbonnais, vice-president and chief investment officer of Bombardier.

American Crane & Equipment Corp. (ACECO) -- a leading manufacturer of cranes, hoists and other material handling equipment, as well as components and parts for standard, custom and nuclear applications

"American Crane trusts BlackBerry's long-standing reputation in mobile security and having had the opportunity to pilot BES12 in our virtual environment for some time now, we're especially impressed by how simple it is to use and how easy it has been to migrate users over. Our employees appreciate the flexibility of being able to use the device that's most comfortable for them, and the interface is more intuitive and easy to support from an IT perspective," said Denny Bono, IT (information technology) manager of ACECO.

Sudzucker AG -- the largest sugar producer in Europe, with headquarters in Mannheim, Germany

"BES12 has provided a practical solution to manage and secure our existing fleet of BlackBerry devices, including our BlackBerry 10 smart phones and BlackBerry OS 7 devices. This optimizes employee productivity in our enterprise environment and unifies our EMM into one easy-to-use system," said Christian Begger, head of ZAO/IT-AC administration and IT controlling, Sudzucker.

Rocco Forte -- a family of 10 highly individual luxury hotels and resorts across Europe and the Middle East, with more new properties due to open soon

"Now with BES12 cross-platform support, we don't have to worry about what device or [operating system]-specific application our users need; we can add all versions of the application, whether it is iOS, Android, Windows or BlackBerry, to BES12 and deploy it the user. BES12 automatically selects the right version of the app for the device being used and pushes it out. It truly is an exciting time," said Emmanuel Clave, group director of IT, Rocco Forte.

The Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One team

The team competes in the FIA Formula One World Championship and is based at the team's operations centre in Brackley, United Kingdom. The team has won the 2014 FIA Formula One World Constructors Championship.

"One of the big benefits for us with BES12 is the unified administration of BlackBerry OS, BlackBerry 10 and all non-BlackBerry devices in our environment. We can easily add people into groups and automatically provision handsets for our users. This will save time for our IT department because we don't actually need to be involved in the provisioning of a new handset. BES12 has been a great experience so far. It's just so simple," said Matt Harris, IT director of the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One team.

TVS Motor Company -- the third largest two-wheeler manufacturer in India and among the top 10 in the world

"With BES12, we look forward to a single secure platform for all mobile devices of our users, supporting their business and personal needs at the same time," said T.G. Dhandapani, chief investment officer of TVS.

Home Hardware -- Canada's largest independent home improvement retailer

"We are seeing that BlackBerry is really listening to their customers. With BES12, they're acknowledging the importance of EMM. There is nothing else on the market that beats BlackBerry for security, and BES12 allows us to broaden that. It allows us the opportunity to introduce other devices into our environment and really extend our BlackBerry security platform. That innovation is really important to our organization," said John R. Dixon, director, corporate infrastructure, Home Hardware.

Perfetti Van Melle India Pvt. Ltd. -- the third-largest confectionery manufacturer in the world, with headquarters in Milan, Italy

"BlackBerry helps us meet our end-to-end solution needs from a mobility and security point of view. With BES12, we aim to consolidate and manage our cross-platform strategy, thus enabling BYOD across devices and users," said Basant Kr Chaturvedi, head of information and communication technology, Perfetti Van Melle.

Trend Micro Inc. -- a global leader in security software and solutions that strives to make the world safe for exchanging digital information

"As threat defence experts, we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of high-risk mobile apps. We trust BlackBerry's secure mobile platform to protect the communication of our executive team, and have committed to deploying BES12 and BBM, protected internally, to take full advantage of the management and protection capabilities these products provide. We are proud to partner with BlackBerry to protect customers from malicious and high-risk apps through BlackBerry Guardian," said Wael Mohamed, chief operating officer of Trend Micro.