BlackBerry's Security vs. Apple’s Appstore—Will PlayBook vs. iPad split IT and Business?

There is no question that mobility and highly mobile devices will play a key role in insurance, both for customers but also as a means for conducting business. Apple has created a great deal of press with their iPhone and iPad products, and are now making headway into insurance companies.

Indeed, in the last two weeks in the UK, it was announced that Lloyds of London is now trialling iPads to enable electronic processes in a  previously heavily paper-based environment. Also in conversations with CIOs in the UK, the iPad and iPhone is proving popular with senior executives. Surely then BlackBerry has arrived too late with its not-yet-released PlayBook?

Actually, BlackBerry may have arrived just in time as far as security specialists in insurers are concerned. Most people aren’t aware that the key reason BlackBerry is so popular with large corporates is the management and security features built into the platform. We’ve all read about the incidents where laptops have been left on trains, and even read about organizations fined many millions of pounds through data loss events. Apple is investing in this area, but is currently far behind BlackBerry in security features. Google’s Android platform is even further behind.

It may well be that internal security teams are banking on PlayBook’s success as a way of delivering something iPad-like to an organization but retaining the necessary controls and measures to avoid significant embarrassment to the organization.

So the race is on. Will Apple secure its first mover advantage and build in enough enterprise level requirements to its platform in time, or will BlackBerry’s strong history in enterprise solutions allow it to recapture lost market share?

This blog has been reprinted with permission from Celent.

Craig Beattie is an analyst in Celent's insurance practice.

Readers are encouraged to respond to Craig using the “Add Your Comments” box below. He also can be reached at cbeattie@celent.com.

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