Strategy Analytics, who recently made headlines with the news of smartphones in use globally crossing 1 billion for the first time in the third quarter, has now released a new report comissioned by RIM wherein they found over the course of a year long study that the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution not only provides the most secure mobile platform but also the lowest total cost of ownership for mobile deployments.

“This study highlights that the cost of setting up and managing devices using a ‘Walled Garden’ architecture is more expensive than using BlackBerry Enterprise Server with BlackBerry smartphones,” said Andrew Brown, Director of Enterprise Research at Strategy Analytics. “When looking to define a cost-efficient, long-term enterprise mobility strategy, we would caution all organisations across both the public and private sectors to look at the total cost of supporting multiple devices with multiple operating systems over several years.”

Overall, the research shows that companies making use of non-BlackBerry smartphones that are managed using an MDM solution and offered VPN access cost 39% more than a BlackBerry Enterprise Server deployment and over time, that percentage of cost is only expected to rise.

As noted, cost wasn't the only thing looked at in the study either. Security of the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution was put to the test using a set of eleven key threats as a framework. It was found that the BlackBerry solution proved the most secure, scoring a low-threat level in ten of the eleven categories. Want to check out the full report yourself? You can download it from here (PDF) while the full press release can be viewed below.