Odyssey Software to Expand Mobile Device Management Offering to Include BlackBerry Support

WEST HENRIETTA, N.Y., Sept., 15, 2009 — Odyssey Software, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise-class mobile device management (MDM) products, today announced that it’s expanding its industry award winning Athena™ mobile device management product to include Research In Motion ® (RIM) BlackBerry® support. Athena’s BlackBerry tools will complement the full functionality of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) and BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS). Athena currently provides features like remote control, provisioning and asset reporting for Windows Mobile and Windows Embedded devices without requiring additional infrastructure, and Odyssey has plans to provide similar functionality for Athena for BlackBerry.

Recent research by Gartner reveals that BlackBerry maker RIM currently holds 17 percent of global market share for smartphones, a market that has increased 47 percent in the last year according to the NPD Group. Based on growing customer and market demand, Odyssey is adding BlackBerry support into its innovative device management offering, which will allow enterprises to integrate mobile device management through a single console, complementing and extending the BES/BIS capabilities to existing enterprise management platforms such as Configuration Manager 2007. 

“It has been predicted that smartphones will reach nearly 177 million in sales by the end of 2009 and that they will climb to more than 544 million in 2012,” said Terrence Cosgrove, senior research analyst of Gartner. “With mobile devices rapidly increasing in number and complexity, organizations must formalize support processes to efficiently serve the growing user population and their device of choice.”

Athena is uniquely designed to integrate directly into the native infrastructure of industry-standard management consoles without the need for proprietary Odyssey server-side components or additional consoles, unlike all other device management products, which require their own proprietary server, console and database infrastructure.  Contrary to traditional management offerings, Athena is specifically architected to be flexible, modular and seamless to integrate.

“The mobile workforce is rapidly evolving, and enterprises are seeking more options to support multiple device platforms,” said Mark Gentile, CEO of Odyssey Software. “By delivering an expanded, uncompromising offering for device management, Odyssey is providing superior tools to support the ongoing evolution of mobility in the enterprise.”

About Odyssey Software
Odyssey Software is a leading provider of enterprise-class device management software products for all Microsoft Windows Mobile, Windows Embedded, and Windows device platforms. Its mission is to provide industry leading software technology innovations that make it efficient and cost effective for IT organizations to manage and support the complexity of mobile enterprise deployments.  More information is available at: www.odysseysoftware.com or by calling 585-214-2409. 

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