Case Study

This Major U.K. Trade Union Works with

BlackBerry for Its Mobility Needs
UNISON

Industry:
Public Sector

Employees:
1,300

Location:
United Kingdom

Product:

BlackBerry® Enterprise

Mobility Suite - Collaboration Edition,

BlackBerry® UEM,

BlackBerry® Work,

BlackBerry® Secure Connect Plus
The Organization
Founded in 1993, UNISON is the second largest trade union in the United Kingdom.
Headquartered in London, it supports nearly 1.3 million professionals in sectors Website:
including local government, education, healthcare, emergency services, and www.unison.org.uk
transportation. Its staff and volunteers assist with everything from pay and
workplace conditions to legal advice, while also running local campaigns for both
recruitment and publicity.
The Challenge
“At any given time, approximately 50% of our staff are out of the office,” explains “We don’t know what
Laurence Arterton, UNISON’s head of Client Support and ICT Services. “UNISON’s
regulation will follow
representatives travel quite frequently, as one might expect in their line of
work. They’re often out doing recruitment activities, handling negotiations for the GDPR, but we’re
members, and hosting meetings across a range of topics.” confident in our
These employees needed to be able to keep in touch with one another and position. BlackBerry,
work seamlessly and effectively while in the field. Since most of UNISON’s Appurity, and Android
staff found it too frustrating to carry around a heavy laptop, smartphones were
the clear solution. However, UNISON’s IT team quickly realised that securing those
Enterprise helped
smartphones could represent a major roadblock. us a great deal with
“People had to be properly productive out of the office via email, contacts, calendar GDPR compliance,
access, and corporate intranet access,” Arterton continues. “But we also needed so issues with any
to ensure the data they worked with was kept safe.”
upcoming regulatory
The trade union stores and manages a wide variety of data and has a duty of care
frameworks are
to keep this data safe. For some members, this might simply be personal details.
Others, however, might provide the trade union with healthcare information. It might highly unlikely. “
store case notes as part of legal arbitration. - Laurence Arterton,

“Because UNISON is a trade union, the data of our members is both highly-sensitive Head of Client Support and ICT
Services, UNISON
and subject to data protection laws,” Arterton explains. “In the United Kingdom,
we’re regarded as working with a special category of data, one which requires even
more careful handling than just personal information. Protecting this data is our
key priority with every IT initiative.”

The Solution
A BlackBerry customer since around 2007, UNISON originally chose BlackBerry®
Enterprise Server (BES®) because it provided security and functionality offered
by no other MDM platform on the market. It was, recalls Arterton, well ahead
of the competition. The trade union has been a BlackBerry customer ever since,
updating its infrastructure as BlackBerry’s portfolio has evolved; today, it supports
a fleet of approximately 1100 Android™ devices.
“It’s been an evolution, just keeping up with releases to make sure we don’t get
too far behind,” says Arterton. “We underwent quite a fast migration from BES10
to BlackBerry® UEM. We’ve been staying abreast of the latest version since then.”
BlackBerry partner Appurity has been instrumental in helping UNISON achieve this.
“Appurity has a high level of technical knowledge pertaining to the BlackBerry
platform – it’s why we were introduced to them,” Arterton recalls. “They have
helped us manage both our BlackBerry solutions and our Exchange hosting. When
we moved to UEM, we decided we wanted to partner with them directly.”
Working with Appurity, UNISON has deployed the BlackBerry® Enterprise Mobility
Suite – Collaboration Edition, designed to help businesses mobilise content, deploy
leading business apps, and deliver enhanced collaboration.

BlackBerry Case Study: Unison | 2

This gives the organisation access to BlackBerry® UEM, a powerful endpoint
management platform that supports a wide range of deployment models
and operating systems. For enterprise email, calendar, and contacts, it has
BlackBerry® Work, a robust productivity tool. Finally, there’s BlackBerry® Secure
Connect Plus, a component of BlackBerry UEM that enables secure, VPN-less
connectivity. UNISON uses this alongside an enterprise-managed version of the
Chrome browser on Android to allow its staff to access a wide range of extranet
Why Appurity?
apps, as well as the databases on which it stores customer information. The prevalence of mobile
devices in all industry sectors,
The Results whether iOS, Android, macOS or
Windows 10, is driving change
Seamless Regulatory Compliance: In many organisations, mobility is something
in business process; Appurity
of a blind spot, with IT unable to map the flow of data between devices. UNISON
is helping organizations deliver
could not afford to be one such enterprise, particularly in light of regulations such
mobile initiatives that improve
as the GDPR. BlackBerry UEM helps ensure they are not, offering full visibility
productivity and empower their
into and control over every endpoint it manages – without the need for additional
employees. Appurity’s focus on
consulting or extra software. This helps UNISON comply with the accountability
mobile device security and app
principle of the GDPR. The law also requires organisations to use appropriate
delivery ensures that our clients
technical or organisational measures to keep personal data secure. BlackBerry
are provided with best of breed,
UEM is the ideal platform to do this.
secure solutions.
“Because BlackBerry has always been a secure platform, we were very pleased
Appurity are top-tier BlackBerry
to know that we didn’t have to introduce any additional security for the GDPR,”
Platinum Partners with many
Arterton explains. “There were other areas of our business where we had to make
years’ experience in design
quite substantial changes, but not around the use of mobile devices. BlackBerry
and delivery of UEM, the first
has always had security at the core of what it delivers.”
U.K. accredited partner for
An Intuitive, Familiar Platform: UNISON has worked with BlackBerry for nearly a BlackBerry ® Workspaces and
decade. Though BlackBerry’s software portfolio has grown significantly in that also deliver BlackBerry® AtHoc®
time, its solutions are still both easy to use and familiar to IT staff. This, notes crisis management solutions to
Arterton, is a major draw for the organisation. its customers.
“From BES10 onwards, we’ve been happy with the functionality BlackBerry Other services include Mobile
provides,” Arterton recalls. “The ease with which we can create and modify policies Managed Services (MMS) where
on the BlackBerry UEM server, the visibility BlackBerry provides into connected Appurity assists customers with
devices, and the fact that everything is both streamlined and simple to understand device security, activation with
are all considerable benefits.” UEM, delivery to end-user, and
The Flexibility to Support Any Use Case: Security aside, one of UNISON’s goals workshops if training is required.
was ensuring staff did not have to carry more than a single device while in the
workplace. As such, it relies on a corporate-owned, personally enabled (COPE)
deployment model. However, there are also some employees who prefer using
their own smartphones for work.
BlackBerry UEM ensures that UNISON can seamlessly support both groups, without
sacrificing security or usability for either.
“There are a few people on our IT team who prefer their own make and model
of smartphone,” notes Arterton. “All users get the same UEM client. There is no
difference in features or security between a BYOD device or a COPE device.”

BlackBerry Case Study: Unison | 3

Android Secured: “Where choosing our mobile OS was concerned, Android
Enterprise was a no-brainer,” says Arterton. “Not only were most of our staff
familiar with it already, it was also the best fit from a usability standpoint. The
“We are happy with
partnership between Google and BlackBerry has further helped enable Android to BlackBerry. The
be highly secure on UEM.” intuitive nature of
Future Plans: Currently, UNISON is evaluating a deployment of BlackBerry® AtHoc®, their platform, its
a crisis communication, emergency notification, and staff accountability platform.
ability to support
With AtHoc, the trade union would be able to fulfill a duty of care to both staff and
members during a crisis. Additionally, Arterton has indicated the trade union is every device, and its
considering the app to communicate non-emergency messages outside regular high security are all
business hours. the encouragement
“Our head office is located in central London,” explains Arterton. “It’s always been we need to stick
in a high-risk category because of its geographical location. We work with police
with it.”
and local business communities to keep abreast of what’s going on and have
various police advisors regularly come in to talk about current threat levels and - Laurence Arterton,
how we might address them.” Head of Client Support and ICT
Services, UNISON
“AtHoc would allow us to get a message – any message we need to deliver – to
whoever we need to contact, whether that’s union members, event attendees, staff,
or lone workers,” he continues, “even if they don’t have an officially-supplied device.”
UNISON is also examining how it might address the challenge of securing
volunteers who might be using devices provided by their employers rather than
by the trade union.
“Regulation like the GDPR has required us to understand a great deal more about
the flow of data through our workforce,” says Arterton. “Volunteers are a challenge,
as we don’t always have control over the security on their devices. We’re currently
looking at bringing those people into a more standardised way of working that we
can control and secure.”

For more information, visit BlackBerry.com/Spark and follow @BlackBerrySpark

on Twitter.

About BlackBerry

BlackBerry (NYSE: BB; TSX: BB) provides intelligent security software and services to enterprises and
governments around the world. The company secures more than 500M endpoints including 150M cars
on the road today. Based in Waterloo, Ontario, the company leverages AI and machine learning to deliver
innovative solutions in the areas of cybersecurity, safety and data privacy solutions, and is a leader in
the areas of endpoint security management, encryption, and embedded systems. BlackBerry’s vision is
clear — to secure a connected future you can trust.

For more information, visit BlackBerry.com and follow @BlackBerry.

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