Samsung and BlackBerry have announced the first results of a partnership designed to provide secure Android smartphones for enterprise users.
On Tuesday in Cape Town, South Africa, the two companies announced a partnership that would see BES12 provide enterprise level security for Samsung’s Knox on Galaxy smartphones.
The deal gives Samsung devices a boost in the enterprise world as far as security of the Android system is concerned.
Paulo Ferreira, director of Enterprise Mobility at Samsung said,
“The word ‘consumer’ in the consumer electronics world tends to put us into a bracket which perhaps polarises us as a consumer electronics company only,”
The partnership between Samsung and BlackBerry will see BES12 used to manage Knox in the corporate environment and add significant security improvement to Samsung smartphones.
One feature highlighted is the ability for enterprise IT managers to allow corporate identities to run alongside consumer applications on a single device, reminiscent of BlackBerry Blend which debuted with the BlackBerry 10 operating system.
“With the device being used in the enterprise type of environment, Samsung is most definitely an organisation that’s focused on enterprise and obviously is looking at adding value to our customers in the enterprise as well,†Ferreira said.
For its part, BlackBerry said that security must be native to an application as opposed to an attempt to ring fence critical applications and platforms.
