IBM Connections on BlackBerry 10
by Volker Weber
IBM has published a Connections Client on BlackBerry World. That's good, since they only supported iOS and Android so far. When you look at the screenshot, you will notice a bar at the bottom with a back icon. That's a dead giveaway for an Android app on BlackBerry. Those run fine on BlackBerry 10.3, but there is a catch: you cannot run Android apps in the work perimeter, since they are considered unsafe. There is no Android player in the BlackBerry work perimeter. That means you can only run the Connections client in the private perimeter, where it won't be managed by your company. And it won't have secure access to on premises Connections servers through the BlackBerry infrastructure.
So close, but yet so far.
To be fair, having a BlackBerry Android app in BlackBerry World is way better than any other option besides having a native client. And building a native client is expensive. Which reminds me, wasn't BlackBerry going to enable Android apps in the work perimeter? Haven't heard anything about that in a while.
Comments
If the new Connection client is an Android app, it is interesting to see, that IBM is not packaging the app as "enterprise app" for BlackBerry's Secure Work Space for Android aka OpenPeak SECTOR, either (marketplace.blackberry.com). This should not cost IBM much effort, because the app just has to be "wrapped".
Maybe they still do not know about this possibility. Maybe the SECTOR technology is not mature enough for this purpose. Other suggestions?
(Maybe it is because the BlackBerry Gatekeeping Service - as part of the new BES12 - supports only MS Exchange and not IBM Traveler to control ActiveSync access...)
