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BlackBerry Connect, introduced by Research In Motion (RIM) in March 2003, serves to expand BlackBerry Enterprise Server with its push-based wireless architecture and infrastructure to competitors mobile devices. Today, the company and rival Palm, Inc. announced plans extend the program to Treo smartphones early next year.

RIM offers the leading business-orientated cellular-wireless handheld, while Palm's Treo is the most popular smartphone in North America. Both companies’ devices feature QWERTY thumb-keyboards—first found in BlackBerry handhelds and since licensed by RIM to numerous other manufactures, including Palm (of course).

Through RIM's BlackBerry Connect licensing program, Palm will be able to offer secure, push-based wireless e-mail via BlackBerry Enterprise Server to Palm's VersaMail e-mail client on the Treo 650 and future Palm-based versions of the smartphone.

The solution also delivers BlackBerry-based support for Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Domino, automatic wireless calendar synchronization (a first for Treo), remote address lookup of corporate e-mail directory, e-mail-attachment viewing, Triple DES encryption, and IT policy enforcement and commands—such as remotely disabling or wiping email and PIM data from a device in the event it is lost or stolen.

"The BlackBerry architecture and infrastructure are recognized around the world as secure, manageable, reliable and scalable, and we are extremely pleased to broaden the choice of BlackBerry-enabled handsets with the Treo 650," said Jim Balsillie, chairman and co-CEO at RIM.

Today's agreement is partially the result of consumer demand. "We have already seen significant customer interest in this powerful combination, and we look forward to building on our relationship with Palm.," Balsillie adds.

RIM announced a similar agreement with PalmSource late in 2003. A few months later the companies demonstrated the technology at the now struggling Palm platform developer's annual conference.

PalmSource officials hoped the deal would help it penetrate the enterprise market. Today's announcement is likelier to have this result, but only for licensee Palm.

Multi-Mob-E-Mail
Over the past couple of years, Palm inked comparable agreements with RIM competitors Seven, Good, Visto and Intellisync to bring their mobile e-mail and data synchronization solutions to Treo as well. The PDA pioneer also supports Microsoft Exchange (with ActiveSync) and IBM’s Lotus notes synchronization separate from BlackBerry Connect.

Like Nokia, which is beginning to offer BlackBerry support for some of its smartphones, Palm is smartly giving consumers, enterprise and carriers a number of mob-e-mail and data access options.

More Palm Platforms
It is not clear what the Nokia/Palm agreement means, if anything, for bringing BlackBerry support to the upcoming Windows Mobile Treo. And, contrary to a denial by CEO by Ed Colligan a few weeks back, rumors persist that Palm may even go with a third mobile device platform for Treo, Symbian—far and way the best selling smartphone platform throughout most of the world.

Microsoft and Symbian have already inked deals with RIM to bring BlackBerry Connect to their respective platforms. If the rumor mill is correct, it is logical that the RIM/Palm agreement would eventually extend non-Palm-platform Treos as well, whether or not it is covered by the earlier agreements with the platform developers.