RIM targets small businesses

Research in Motion is launching a scaled-down BlackBerry server architecture it hopes will spread RIM’s appeal from the big enterprise to the small office.

Called BlackBerry Professional Software, the platform is actually a program that can be installed on the same server as its sister e-mail software, whether it’s Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino. It contains the same core push e-mail and synchronization technology as the full-fledged BlackBerry Enterprise server but is designed to scale up to a maximum of 30 users, and while RIM is including the same security and encryption features in BlackBerry Pro, it has greatly simplified the interface and management software, making it easier to handle in a company without a dedicated IT department, said Alan Panezic, vice president of software product management for RIM.

RIM is scaling down the price along with the server, charging $500 for a license supporting up to 5 users or $850 for a 10-user license, compared to the $3000 it costs just to license the full BlackBerry enterprise server. The aim, Panezic said, is to follow businesses as they grow, so RIM has designed BlackBerry Pro to migrate seamlessly to its small and medium enterprise server as a company adds employees. But RIM isn’t just focusing on big businesses in their infancy, Panezic said, it’s taking a legitimate interest in the small business segment.

“We are most known for our success with the enterprise, but we’ve found that 52% of our potential customers are outside of the large businesses,” Panezic said. “And we’ve found that smaller businesses have much more need for mobility than larger ones.”

The SMB is a potentially huge market for RIM to tap into, representing 52% of all mobile workers, Panezic said. What’s more, the market is one that’s still relatively untapped by the competition, which, like RIM, have been primarily focused on larger accounts. RIM is feeling pressure from Microsoft as more phone vendors adopt its Windows Mobile smartphone platform and the Active Synch software that plugs directly into Microsoft’s industry leading Exchange server. By targeting the small business early, RIM hopes to make its push e-mail solution as indispensable to that segment as the original BlackBerry was to their bigger brothers, Panezic said.

“Fewer players are gaining traction in the SMB space than in the enterprise space,” Panezic said. “It’s not exactly a green field, but it’s one of the reasons we’re very excited about this space.”

RIM has been trying to expand beyond its core big-business customer base in recent years in order to take advantage of an e-mail market that has outgrown the enterprise. The BlackBerry Pearl was its first consumer-targeted device, and it has been piling on more consumer-friendly devices after the Pearl’s initial success. This week the Pearl branched out into the CDMA market as Verizon Wireless announced it would begin selling an EV-DO version of the tiny smartphone on Thursday.