You may remember back in December I told you about some VPN software being developed for Android and iPhone and I mentioned I thought it “almost looks like a shot across the bow at BlackBerry and their stranglehold on Enterprise clients”. Well, it looks like BlackBerry did not take that news sitting down and they are fighting back.

BlackBerry Balance is set to launch in two short months and will, according to Jeff McDowell, RIM’s Senior VP for Business & Platform Marketing, be able to separate personal email, apps, and other content from those used on the job. The Balance software is what is going to allow corporate IT departments to retain control over all corporate and sensitive data such as business-related email sent through a BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) while allowing the employee to browse the web and go to social networking sites and have pictures/videos on the device all separate from the corporate use for their device and without compromising corporate security. According to Mr. McDowell, North American carriers are already testing the software - although which carriers are doing the testing wasn’t revealed.

I also wonder if you will be allowed to use your corporate BES plan for your web browsing on one of these devices or will it mean you are going to have to have a separate, personal, BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service) account. What about contact syncing? Will you have to have two separate address books? Will this work on devices with older versions of the BlackBerry OS such as 4.6 or 5.0 or only on BlackBerry 6? So many questions!!!

For More Info:

Reuters article where the info about this was discussed here

Cnet article about this here