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The Dread Server BlackBerry Enterprise is no more

BlackBerry rebrands much-feared mail server

BES, the TLA that has struck trepidation into BOFHs for a decade, is no more. The brand name has been discarded in the biggest rationalisation of the company’s product lines in the company’s history.

BlackBerry's product reorganisation leaves almost no part of its enterprise portfolio untouched. Practically every product that BlackBerry has developed, or acquired is rebranded. The company also introduced a single sign on (SSO) offering, allowing a secure device to access third party cloud services such as SalesForce or Office 365.

“Simply unlocking the phone grants transparent access to services without requiring a password,” BlackBerry explains.

The company also unveiled an SDK allowing developers to integrate UEM management, Workspaces document control, and BlackBerry Dynamics into their apps.

BES 12 becomes “BlackBerry UEM”. WatchDox becomes “BlackBerry Workspaces”. Strong Authentication becomes “BlackBerry 2FA”. The "Good" brand vanishes from the apps suites: Good Dynamics, Good Work, Good Access, Good Connect, Good Share, Good Tasks all become BlackBerry-branded products.

AtHoc, the emergency squawker, remains AtHoc. QNX remains QNX - that’s really a division unto itself. And there’s no mention of one of the more interesting and useful offerings – WorkLife. That’s the virtual SIM offering that allows personal and corporate phone use to be partitioned nicely - without the boss spying on you. That was acquired via British outfit Movirtu.

The BlackBerry Enterprise Server was mandatory for larger enterprises when they adopted BlackBerry messaging en masse, in the early and mid Noughties. It was complex and unloveable (PDF) (requiring a separate BlackBerry Router), but with so few options for mobile messaging, managers demanded 'Berrys.

By the time RIM became BlackBerry, BYOD had happened, and the BES suite's focus was on managing a variety of end points, rather than shunting messages. Today, UEM manages Android for Work and Samsung KNOX containers, as well as iOS, Windows 10, OS X and BlackBerry 10 clients. ®

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