Mobile Fusion will run on its own server or virtual machine and will manage the BES

Shares of Research In Motion Ltd., the maker of BlackBerry phones, climbed Tuesday after an analyst upgrade. THE SPARK: Pierre Ferragu at Bernstein Research upgraded shares of RIM to "Market-Perform" from "Underperform." RIM had announced its plan to introduce such software in May. Other companies already sell remote-management software for non-BlackBerry phones. THE ANALYSIS: Ferragu points to the service fees RIM gains from phone companies for running the BlackBerry email system, saying a buyer who pays a 50 percent premium for the company would make back 62 percent of its investment over three years through service fees alone.

BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, announced Tuesday, isn't just Research In Motion's first entry in the race to manage enterprises' whole mobile environments. It's also positioned to ultimately succeed the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Mobile Fusion, which is in limited beta testing and due to ship in late March, is a software platform for managing Android and iOS phones and tablets as well as BlackBerry smartphones and RIM's PlayBook tablet. It can handle security, policy definition and enforcement, app management and other tasks required to oversee mobile devices in an enterprise.

Mobile Fusion will run on its own server or virtual machine and will manage the BES even as it controls the broader array of devices, all from one console, said Alan Panezic, vice president of enterprise product management. But in the longer term, a key role for Mobile Fusion will be to deliver BES capabilities for the next generation of RIM devices that will run the emerging BBX operating system. (BBX will encompass the OSes for RIM's tablet and future smartphones, as well as other hardware, based on the QNX operating system.) Starting with Version 2.0 of the PlayBook operating system, due in February, Mobile Fusion will offer direct management of the PlayBook. As future BBX devices such as smartphones hit the market, they will be managed through Mobile Fusion, Panezic said. Eventually, once an enterprise has finished migrating from BlackBerry to BBX devices, it will be able to manage them purely through Mobile Fusion, without the BES, he said.

For enterprises with tens of thousands of mobile devices, that will mean fewer physical or virtual servers to maintain, Panezic said.--Despite its central role in RIM's strategy for its own devices, Mobile Fusion is also intended to compete with other mobile-device management systems regardless of client operating system. RIM's advantage will be its own reputation and the unified management that Mobile Fusion will offer, Panezic said.--Research In Motion is rolling out a new system that aims to help its corporate customers keep track of employees' BlackBerrys as well as rival devices, including the iPhone. A number of smaller companies have started devising software that allows companies to more easily manage—and provide consistent security for—all those different devices.

RIM is now jumping into that niche. RIM is expected Tuesday to unveil BlackBerry Mobile Fusion—a software system that will allow companies to integrate a number of competing devices and operating systems into their corporate mobile ecosystem. The software will also be compatible with the iPhone and iPad, as well as devices that run off Android, RIM said. "There are dozens of little companies offering bits and pieces" of mobile security, RIM's Mr. Panezic said. The service is also a fresh push by RIM into services and software, an often-overlooked side of its business. Services and software accounted for more than 25% of RIM's revenue last quarter.