AirWatch is making it known that it wants to buy BlackBerry's secure service business. While such a combination would give AirWatch the chance to offer the full spectrum of mobile management, BlackBerry isn't likely to sell it anytime soon.
A Wall Street Journal article this morning quotes AirWatch's CEO as saying he's approached BlackBerry about buying the services businesses. The report comes a couple days after another, from Reuters, indicating BlackBerry isn't interested in splitting up the company.
BlackBerry's service is what the company built its business on. It includes network operations centers around the world that securely route email to and from BlackBerry devices, via corporate BlackBerry Enterprise Servers. It's this system that offers the high security that BlackBerry is best known for.
Read also: Microsoft sets a collision course with AirWatch
If BlackBerry is doing so badly though, why would any other company want this service? Because even though most companies are moving away from issuing BlackBerrys to all of their mobile workers, there will continue to be a segment of mobile workers that requires the kind of security BlackBerry offers. Most large companies aren't switching wholesale to BYOD.
Unisys, which helps enterprises manage their mobile device strategies, recently told CITEworld that most of its customers have a handful of different internal models for supporting mobile phones. They typically have a set of workers that have a company-owned and issued phone that's fully paid for. Other workers may be asked to choose from a handful of devices and the company will pay for the telecom expenses and manage content on the phones. Another group of users will be able to choose any phone they want and the company will support just a couple of apps, like email and calendaring. Companies decide which category workers will fall in based on their job and the security required around their communications.
'We are seeing all those different scenarios within businesses,' said Darren McGrath, global director of mobility solutions at Unisys.
If AirWatch had the BlackBerry service, it could start offering support for all those scenarios from a single source.
It's also hard to replicate. For AirWatch to develop something like it, it would have to build NOCs around the world. It would also require the technology that BlackBerry developed that allows this secure routing to happen so quickly. Nobody else has built anything like this, indicating the expense and challenges involved.
The trouble is, BlackBerry is trying to do the exact same thing. It only recently started supporting iPhones and Android from its management servers. Its BlackBerry Enterprise Server now offers a range of mobile device management capabilities, including support for lower level security on worker-owned devices.
If BlackBerry continues to slide downhill - and there aren't many indications that its fortunes will improve - it could get desperate enough to split up the company and sell anything left that has value. Given that AirWatch is unlikely to find the same BlackBerry service elsewhere or develop it in house, it might be able to wait. But BlackBerry isn't ready to throw in the towel just yet.
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