The corporate landscape is littered by defunct companies that were complacent and thought their previous success could somehow overcome their lack of vision and innovation to remain relevant. As noted physicist and Episcopal priest William Pollard said, "The arrogance of success is to think that what we did yesterday is good enough for tomorrow." That quote definitely applies to the mobile manufacturing industry. Nokia (News - Alert), the number one manufacturer for many years, is basically irrelevant in the smartphone sector. BlackBerry is on life support, and only time will tell what will become of the company. With these two great examples as a backdrop, Samsung (News - Alert) is making sure it doesn't follow their footstep by going after markets that were once the domain of BlackBerry, public and private enterprises.
In order to address this very lucrative market Samsung developed its Knox and SAFE platforms to assure enterprises that Android (News - Alert) devices could indeed be protected and incorporated in BYOD initiatives and other enterprise solutions. When the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) approved the Samsung Knox-enabled devices last year to be used in its networks, it highlighted the platform’s robust security features.
In order to qualify as part of the DoD's mobile deployment which, by the way, was dominated by BlackBerry in the past, the platform must pass a security review process by going through testing that is approved by the Defense Information Systems Agency (News - Alert), whose security technical implementation guide (STIG) standards must be met.
The new order the company received from the US Army is for 7,000 devices to be used as part of the Nett Warrior system, a platform that uses off the shelf devices to be used in military applications. The US National Security Agency (NSA) has also procured several thousand devices from the company as part of an agency-wide update called the Fishbowl Project.
Even though these agencies generally use their own applications, Samsung has clearly made enough of an impression regarding its security efforts to warrant these purchases.
Samsung announced its push in the enterprise market in 2014 as the share for consumer markets continues to decrease, and the void BlackBerry has left in enterprise solutions has not fully been addressed by any other company, but that is rapidly changing. Companies like Good Technology (News - Alert), Dell and VMware are all looking at the sector with other serious contenders looking to make their presence felt.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson