Trust Digital's New Reseller Program and What it Means to Enterprise iPhone Adoption

Trust Digital’s New Reseller Program and What it Means to Enterprise iPhone Adoption

by Jeff Garbers on 17/11/09 at 6:24 pm

Jeff Garbers, CTO of Rover Apps, is a software architect and user interface designer with over 30 years in the technology industry and a writer for iPhoneCTO.

To bring iPhones into your large or security-conscious enterprise, you’re going to need a way to manage them effectively. The BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) may have set the bar for smartphone management platforms, but new tools are filling the management gap for iPhone — and, in some cases, going beyond.

One of the better-known players in this arena, Trust Digital, announced their global reseller program today. In an exclusive iPhoneCTO interview, we connected with Trust Digital’s VP of Reseller and Service Provider Sales, Nick Turner.

For our readers who aren’t familiar with Trust Digital, give us a little background. What’s the problem you’re trying to solve, and how long have you been delivering solutions?

Nick: Since 2004, Trust Digital has been helping business IT secure and manage their handheld devices. Today, many of the IT groups that we speak with are faced with internal demand for consumer-centric devices such as the iPhone, but they lack the IT tools needed to manage them. We provide IT with a platform that helps make them ready and comfortable supporting these new devices.

A casual observer might characterize your products as “like BlackBerry Enterprise Server for everything but BlackBerry.” In what ways is that accurate? In what significant ways do you differ from BES?

Most of our customers are BlackBerry shops, so the BES analogy gives them an immediate understanding of what we do. The Trust Digital EMM platform provides centralized management and over-the-air activation and control of non-BlackBerry devices, similar to what BES does for RIM devices. It does not support email sync which is native to most messaging platforms. That distinction is also important because we really manage smartphones more like laptops because of application potential. I recently read an article by David Pogue of the NY Times where he stated that the iPhone, Android and webOS are not smartphones; they are “app phones”. Smartphones, such as the Palm Treo, Motorola Q and most BlackBerry devices, are primarily email devices wed with cell phones. Our platform is geared to supporting the new app phones, enabling easy and secure access of enterprise applications by automating configuration of devices features such as WiFi and VPN and distributing digital certificates for authentication.

Along with iPhone (the local favorite here at iPhoneCTO), you support Android, Palm’s WebOS, Windows Mobile, and Symbian phones. Has that broad platform support been important to your customers? Which platforms are you finding to be on the rise among your customers, and which are becoming less popular?

There’s no doubt that the iPhone is animating the CIO’s office, but our broad support is important because they must offer device choice to the end-user. They need a flexible platform that is capable of doing that over time — essentially future proofing their mobile strategy. And quite frankly, enterprises don’t want a repeat of the single-vendor silo they had with BlackBerry. All told, that represents a new challenge for most IT organizations that built solely around BlackBerry. In fact, we had one prospect who conducted an RFP for 18 months specifying that the chosen platform had to support a set of smartphones. At the end of their process, they found that many of the specified smartphones were no longer offered by the carriers and the chosen management platform could not support the new smartphones on the market.

Again, iPhone is the big market driver, but there is also a great deal of interest in the Android platforms which seems to be fed in the U.S. by carrier service coverage.

Interestingly, once our EMM platform is installed to service iPhones, IT organizations quickly extend it to consolidate support for the pockets of Windows Mobile and webOS devices they may have in the organization.

Is that story different in markets outside the US?

Actually, there is a major difference that surprised us. BlackBerry email service is an additional line-item outside the U.S., and the costs can be so high that we’ve actually talked to some enterprises moving to iPhone to save money! Quite frankly, push-email is now free and OTA works, so such charges really do defy reality, and enterprises are starting to express their frustration by selecting other devices.

Let’s talk about your just-announced global reseller program. What kind of VAR would be a good fit for Trust Digital in terms of size, market focus, skill sets, etc.?

Trust Digital has been enjoying great feedback and success with existing BES VARs. They have the requisite skills and understand how to sell, service and monetize BES, and they see Trust Digital as a simple extension of their existing business. Moreover, enterprises have long-standing relationships with these BES VARs, which is important when extending into new and unfamiliar territory to support new devices. And let’s be clear, “BES VAR” represents a universe of players — systems integrators, traditional VARs, hosted platform providers, service providers and mobile operators.

RIM was the standard for enterprise mobility, and all these players built their mobility core competencies based on RIM. BlackBerry is no longer the standard for enterprise devices, but the core competencies of RIM’s partners do survive — and they’re arguably more important and more valuable as new devices and capabilities enter the enterprise equation.

Are there any resellers already signed up? How do they see your products complementing what they’re already offering their customers?

Certainly. We aren’t simply announcing a new program. We’ve been building this program for some time, including aligning key go-to-market partners. You’ll notice that we’re already publicly announcing a number of these partners, and you’ll see a steady drumbeat of others in the days and weeks to come.

In what ways do you expect (or require) resellers to add value to your products? Configuration, integration, training…?

Think about the challenge to the IT department. They’re looking forward at new devices delivering more and more applications — well beyond email. We have been looking for partners who can aid in that transition, helping the enterprise build a true “mobility practice”. Certainly, doing so requires the obvious array of services in your question.

What will you be doing to recruit and support resellers?

We’ve aligned key partners around the world and in various market sectors — our “Platinum Partners” — and they’ve been integral in both recruiting and ramping up new partners. We’ve been investing in these partners for quite some time, which is why we’re only now announcing the program.

Back to more general questions. From talking to your customers, do you think most enterprises are trying to limit the number of different smartphone platforms they support, or are they looking for solutions that let them accommodate as many platforms as possible?

Every enterprise is different, but IT managers are generally under pressure to accommodate employee-liable devices. Obviously, that pressure makes it difficult to impart limits. But more interesting is the shift in mentality. Many enterprises proudly defined themselves “BlackBerry shops”, but as they peek over the fence at new devices like iPhone, these same enterprises undergo a total shift in strategy — embracing device choice as a good thing.

Enterprises undergoing a full or partial migration from BlackBerry to iPhone may certainly find your solution attractive. However, BlackBerry is conspicuously absent from your list of supported devices. How would a split iPhone / BlackBerry shop use your solutions and maintain consistency across platforms?

We appreciate the inclination to put everything under common management, but enterprises are comfortable with their BES — benefits, warts and all. So while that’s a typical question early in an engagement, enterprises quickly conclude themselves to leave well-enough alone. So, replacing the BES is not part of our strategy. Instead, with the Webservices capabilities of BES 5.0, we see the opportunity for tighter integration between the BES and EMM. That integration will first address some operational challenges, such as providing the help desk with a single view of all smartphones, but will eventually provide a way for administrators to create a single policy for a user group that can be translated into the policy “bits” required by an iPhone, BlackBerry device, or Android device.