Ontario-based Research In Motion officially launched the highly-anticipated BlackBerry Mobile Fusion – the company’s next-generation mobile device management (MDM) solution for enterprise customers.  Its ability to manage rival devices including iOS and Android marks another way in which RIM hopes cross-platform support will make it a more inviting service provider.

BlackBerry Mobile Fusion is built on the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, which is considered the gold standard for government and business use. It also delivers a cost-efficient, secure, reliable and scalable solution that consolidates the management of smartphones and tablets running BlackBerry OS, which includes support for BlackBerry PlayBook and upcoming BlackBerry 10 devices, as well as support for Android and iOS devices, providing a single, unified, web-based console to easily manage all devices.

“For businesses and government, managing a mix of mobile devices on any scale is chaotic. Organizations face pressure to allow employees to bring their own devices into the workplace, and they are looking to RIM as the global leader in the enterprise mobility space to solve that problem,” said Alan Panezic, Vice President, Enterprise Product Management and Marketing at Research In Motion.

“BlackBerry Mobile Fusion allows organizations to manage a mixed environment of devices in the most secure, simple, and cost efficient manner possible. It also means that businesses and government do not have to move to the lowest common denominator on security for all the devices they need to manage.”

BlackBerry Mobile Fusion features:

• BlackBerry Device Service: provides management features for BlackBerry PlayBook tablets

• Universal Device Service: provides management features for devices that use the iOS and Android operating systems

• BlackBerry Mobile Fusion Studio: a web app that provides a single place for management of mobile devices, users, configurations, policies and more.

The BlackBerry Mobile Fusion software is now available as a free download, but using it comes with a price dictated by the number of devices being managed.  Client access licenses (CALs) start at $99 per user or $4 per user per month, which is billed annually.  But if you have a lot of devices to manage, you can take advantage of their volume discounts.  And to make things more interesting, RIM is offering a 60-day free trial that will allow customers to deploy a pilot before purchasing a single CAL. Click here for the 60-day free trial.

News regarding the BlackBerry Mobile Fusion first broke last year when RIM introduced it as a solution for the growing bring-your-own-device to work market.

Can the enterprise save RIM once again?

Hopefully, this new enterprise solution could save RIM.  Yesterday was a sad day for BlackBerry fans as the Canadian Government announced that if worse came to worst, they would not stand in the way if RIM decided to sell their business.  But RIM CEO Thorsten Heins stated that selling the company is not on top of their list, a last resort, if you may.

The Canadian Government’s announcement woke RIM fans as they voiced out their love for their BlackBerrys.  True BlackBerry fans still prefer their devices over the many iOS and Android touchscreen devices because of their tactile keyboard that facilitates faster communication.  And of course, BBM remains a popular tool, even inviting cloud music service integration for end users.