The blackberry has been ubiquitous in banking since the beginning of the last decade, when the devices were picked up by all the major wireless network providers and became trendy enough to create a generation of "CrackBerry" addicts throughout the corporate world.
Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry and of the software that ties the devices into corporate information technology networks, has long been a safe bet for chief information officers and their IT departments. Aside from the occasional server outage, the security and controls associated with BlackBerry have provided a strong sense of comfort to those responsible for keeping corporate data and devices safe.
But RIM's falling prospects and the pressure on companies to accommodate employees who prefer to handle remote tasks on their own mobile devices have upset this sense of security.
According to the latest comScore figures, RIM has just a 15.2 percent share of the smartphone market, compared with 48.6 percent for Google Android and 29.5 percent for Apple. RIM's fiscal fourth quarter revenue of $4.2 billion was down 19 percent from the third quarter and 25 percent from the year-earlier quarter.
"BlackBerry has lost it big time," says Zahid Afzal, chief information officer at Huntington Bank. "In the forums I participate in, people are moving off it so fast it's unbelievable. I remember when I first got a BlackBerry-it was the best thing that ever happened to me."
Another bank CIO who still runs a BlackBerry shop has doubts about how much longer that will continue. "Often we're asked, 'Why can't we use our Apples and other devices?"
Financial institutions have begun supporting other mobile devices in the trend toward BYOD (for "bring your own device"). With employees feeding other addictions now, to Apple or Android phones or to tablets such as the iPad, many are asking to use, or to be issued, their preferred device at work.
For all its challenges, RIM still has a fairly firm grasp on the corporate world. "The BlackBerry at the moment is still the dominant device-that's been confirmed to me numerous times by the heads of cash management at very large banks, whose clients are on BlackBerries," says Celent senior analyst Jacob Jegher. But a straw poll he took at a fall meeting of the Association for Financial Professionals indicated that 10 percent of the audience planned to move away from an exclusive reliance on the BlackBerry sometime in the next year. This, he says, would represent "massive" erosion for RIM.
Jegher, a Canadian who freely discloses that fact when he blogs about RIM, argues that the Ontario-based company foresaw a lot of what has come to pass, and says it shrewdly extended the shelf life of its enterprise server business by offering software that companies can use to manage Google Android and Apple iOS devices, in addition to the BlackBerry. "They're not totally out to lunch when it comes to focusing on the enterprise market," Jegher says.
"Is the stock tanking? Yes. Is management being ousted? Yes. Have they failed when it comes to innovating their devices? Yes. Have the Apple fanboy sites trashed RIM in the media to the point where it's tarnished its reputation more than it deserves? Absolutely."
The BYOD trend may have limitations because of the security concerns associated with the use of personal devices. At 1st Advantage Federal Credit Union in Newport News, Va., for example, employees can work on whatever device they want, but the only company IT assets that can be accessed from personal devices are the Outlook Exchange servers.
If employees wish to go beyond email or access unsanctioned sites-for social networking, for example-they may very well find it easier to go back to carrying separate devices for work and home, rather than risk being blocked by security software when they try to venture into areas cordoned off by corporate firewalls. "If folks start bringing their own devices to work, the personal device becomes subject to corporate rules, policies and security," Jegher says.
No matter the pace at which it happens, the softening of BlackBerry-only policies will be costly-not just for RIM, but for the financial institutions that start embracing the use of alternatives. Moving away from the BlackBerry means investing more in tools and infrastructure to protect information on other kinds of mobile devices.
"You do need better tools, no question," Huntington's Afzal says. "A lot of tools were built in for the BlackBerry by RIM; that's why you paid for their server. Now CIOs and CISOs [chief information security officers] have to worry about it and handle it on their own."
He says Huntington is weighing the idea of allowing its employees to use Android, iPhone and iPad devices for work. "When colleagues want to be more productive, we have to change with the times. But the security aspects we don't compromise on."
