The BlackBerry Enterprise Server 12 (BES12) software is designed for corporate and government users and helps them manage policies, rules and restrictions on smartphones. BlackBerry thinks that if companies adopt more BYOD device policies they will need BES12 to do it properly. Blackberry has been in this market for a while but the outfit claims that BES12 is easier to run. It is intended to solve an existing headache for enterprise IT managers. BES10 supports Apple, Android and BlackBerry 10 devices, but not older generations of BlackBerry handsets and outfits still have to run the elderly BES5 software.
BES12 will bring these together in a single package and add support for Windows Phone 8, which is slowly gaining popularity in Europe and some developing markets. BlackBerry said it will ship in late 2014 and when it does it will be for deployment on servers owned by customers and on private clouds. A cloud-based version for small and medium-size enterprise customers will follow in early 2015.