News & Events

IBM & RIM to Enhance Enterprise Application Access

Posted on: Monday, February 16, 2004

IBM and Research In Motion (RIM) recently announced a global agreement aimed at providing mobile workers with better access to enterprise information and applications using BlackBerry®. This relationship, based on IBM's WebSphere Everyplace Access (WEA) mobile middleware and BlackBerry Enterprise Server™, will allow BlackBerry users to wirelessly access and work with enterprise data, and wirelessly synch their information with server applications.

Value For Your Business...

  • Increase returns from existing IBM, BlackBerry & enterprise application investments.
  • Increased field force and sales force productivity to information.
  • Improved decision making by enabling more, and better data to be pushed out to mobile decision makers from enterprise applications.
  • Streamline operations and business processes.
This relationship combines the advantages of IBM's enterprise application access capability with RIM's wireless solutions and services.

The combined solution is aimed at allowing faster development and customization of workforce solutions regardless of the application and data sets required. WEA and BlackBerry enable developers to build and deploy solutions involving multiple applications, giving mobile workforces the flexibility to interact with a variety of applications as well as with PIM and email.

Integration of the BlackBerry platform with IBM® WEA enables the creation of portlet applications and push-based notifications that provide BlackBerry users with access to content and services. A portlet is a type of servlet that runs on the WEA server and provides access to applications and static or dynamic content. Users view portlets as part of a portal page.

Architected For Success:
Add-on BlackBerry components for WEA enable portlets to use the Mobile Data Service feature of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server to connect into corporate networks with the same security offered by the BlackBerry solution. Users view portlets in the BlackBerry Browser on the handheld.