Hewlett-Packard  and Research In Motion announced a strategic alliance Monday to deliver solutions for business mobility on the BlackBerry platform. The planned solutions focus on increasing service levels, reducing operations costs, and improving productivity for customers. Among the planned solutions is support for BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0.
Specifically, HP and RIM plan to design and launch offerings that increase productivity for road warriors around the world and make way for businesses to extend their return on investment for global mobility services.
"RIM and HP are working together to deliver solutions to customers that weave mobility into their daily operations -- from innovative new services in the cloud to managed mobile services for the enterprise ," said Jim Balsillie, RIM's co-chief executive officer. "Through our collaboration with HP, businesses will have access to an expanded set of applications and services for their BlackBerry smartphone deployments."
Easy Printing Anywhere?
HP will demonstrate two new solutions -- HP CloudPrint for BlackBerry smartphones and HP Operations Manager for BlackBerry Enterprise Server -- at this year's Wireless Symposium in Orlando, Fla., on Wednesday.
HP CloudPrint for BlackBerry is a Web-based solution that lets users print e-mails, documents, photos and Web pages using a BlackBerry smartphone, whether they are at the office, at home, or on the road. HP and RIM plan to make CloudPrint available to BlackBerry Internet Service subscribers as well as BlackBerry Enterprise Server customers.
"As businesses look for new ways to increase service levels, reduce operational costs and improve productivity, they can meet these challenges by transforming how they manage the infrastructure that powers their mobile workforces," said Ann Livermore, executive vice president of HP's Technology Solutions Group. "Emerging models of communications and collaboration have created an opportunity for RIM and HP to provide service-based mobile solutions that deliver value to customers."
Mike Disabato, a senior analyst at The Burton Group, isn't convinced road warriors should take advantage of the CloudPrint service. The bandwidth issues on the BlackBerry alone would be enough to prevent many from attempting to print a Microsoft Word document or an Excel Spreadsheet. There are also security issues. (continued...)
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