RIM bets big on SME for enterprise mobility solutions

After registering a strong presence in large enterprise, Research In Motion (RIM) has now penned down strategies to capture the enterprise mobility spend of Indian small and medium enterprise (SMEs). The company's intent is to gain 20% of the market share of this growing mobility spend in the next one year.

Hence to reach out to the wide spread SME market in India, which is the second largest, globally, after china, RIM has partnered with Noida based GETIT Infoservices, a leading digital marketing company, which serves as a platform for local search, classified, micro communities, deals, etc. The company has a strong SME customers base in India.

With this partnership, GETIT will market RIM's enterprise mobility solutions including BlackBerry enterprise server express at zero software licensing fee. As per the existing revenue model, GETIT will be compensated by RIM for every lead generation, which the company further translate to its existing enterprise channel for the fulfillment of the deal including smart phone devices, applications, services and other mobility solutions.

Talking about their plans for addressing SME market, Sunil Lalvani, director, enterprise sales, RIM India said, "We have been playing in the SME space for long with our BlackBerry enterprise server express, which we launched last year, but our focus is to further enhance this presence, so we have tied up with GETIT. We would be leveraging strong presence of GETIT. The company has 25 year legacy of servicing Indian SMEs. The company will focus on sectors like manufacturing, food processing, pharmaceuticals, textile and garments and retail."

GETIT, already has partnership with Google, Expedia and Yahoo in the enterprise business, now with BlackBerry, it would offer complete solutions to SMEs.

While explaining the 'zero-cost' factor Lalvani said, "After doing rounds of brainstorming, we have launched a solution, which would be very attractive and affordable. Mobility is largely under-penetrated, BlackBerry enterprise server express has been growing significantly, the uptake of this has grown four folds in the last 2 quarters. The zero-cost model works in favor of SMEs, as there is no hassle in terms of software licensing and annual recurring fee. Customer has to invest on one time subscription fee and they will get perpetual license from us, after that they can activate enterprise server at zero cost and can avail services like mobile email, application and calendaring options."

When asked what if an SME has an existing server, Lalvani replied, "If an SME customer already has Small Business Server, which can support up to 75 users, than the customer does not need any additional hardware and can download the license and enable it on the same server. Having said that, if the requirement is beyond 75, our server can scale up to 2,000 users."

On the channel front, the company has appointed Ingram Micro as national distributor. The distributor also has 50 plus active trained and certified value added resellers.