IBM offers fixed-cost BlackBerry support for enterprises

IBM wants to manage BlackBerry devices for enterprises and will now do so for a fixed cost.

IBM has been offering BlackBerry management services for businesses, but there was no standard cost model, said Dan Papes, vice president of IBM Mobile Enterprise Services.

[ Which mobile device is the best? InfoWorld pits the BlackBerry versus the iPhone in its mobile deathmatch. | Dive deep into the next-gen mobile devices in InfoWorld's PDF special report. ]

Now, an enterprise can pay a fixed fee per user per month and IBM will manage the BlackBerry service, including secondary end-user support, integration with corporate back-end systems, and monitoring services.

Depending on the services delivered, enterprises will pay $15 to $18 per user per month, Papes said.

Enterprises want that kind of predictable cost structure, he said. Some large enterprises IBM works with don't know what it costs them to support BlackBerry devices. "They look at deploying another 5,000 BlackBerrys to their field force and they're not sure what it costs them. We can tell them what it will cost," Papes said.

He estimates that paying IBM to manage the service typically will reduce the total cost of ownership of the service by 15 to 30 percent.