Earlier this week, it was revealed that energy giant Haliburton is was going to begin a transition that will replace all corporate BlackBerry devices with iPhones.
RIM got more bad news today in the form of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announcing that the federal agency will also be dropping the BlackBerry platform in favor of the iPhone.
The news came via a memo from the agency’s CIO Joseph Klimavicz dated February 3. The memo, obtained by Jim Dalrymple of The Loop indicates that BlackBerry support will extend only until May 12 of this year. After which, the agency will replace BlackBerry handsets with iPhones running iOS 5 or later. The memo noted the NOAA will also include support for the iPad 2.
This move comes after NOAA’s decision to switch to Google Apps for email and calendaring infrastructure. That decision was part of the Obama administration’s efforts to pursue a “cloud first” approach.
With this transition, NOAA becomes part of a trend in the U.S. federal government to move from BlackBerry to iOS devices. It also comes after the U.S. CIO Steven VanRoekel discussed efforts to embrace mobile technology across federal agencies at CES last month calling the effor a pledge to “make this year the year of mobile.”
Ryan Faas is a technology journalist and consultant living in upstate New York who has written extensively about Apple, business and enterprise IT, and the mobile industry. In addition to writing for Cult of Mac, he is a contributor to Computerworld, InformIT, and Peachpit Press. In a previous existence he was a healthcare IT director as well as a systems and network administrator. Follow Ryan on Twitter and Google +.
4 responses to “In Another Blow For RIM, NOAA Ditches BlackBerry For iPhone and iPad”
All those protestors protesting against how iOS devices are made and here is their own government buying thousands of iOS devices themselves. CLASSIC!!
Leave it to CoM to fill my screen with the NOAA seal.
As a former NOAA employee, I can tell you they really don’t think about things like that. But they are really good at spending lots of money on things that they then decided where wrong and then spend more money trying to fix there messes while having to cut funding on important projects . Funny there is no mention that
NOAA IT recently pulled all the Macbooks much to the anger of several of my friends.
interesting, thanks for the 411