RIM, as expected, will be focusing a lot of attention with the upcoming release of the PlayBook to marketing it toward corporate enterprise customers. The company already has a strong foothold in this space, with most companies standardized on the BlackBerry as their enterprise portable communication platform of choice.

With PlayBook, RIM will look to leverage customers’ existing investment in their BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Using BES enterprise customers will be able to handle common functions, such as provisioning, configuring, applying corporate policies, application deployment/management, and, of course, auditing PlayBook devices using the BES infrastructure that they already own.

The PlayBook will offer multiple connectivity profiles that can be configured, including Personal mode, BlackBerry Bridge Mode, VPN Mode and BlackBerry Balance Mode. Using these options in different combinations, the corporate customers can offer a secure corporate experience while at the same time allow for personal use of the platform with specific areas on the PlayBook.

RIM looks to continue to expand the corporate offerings for the PlayBook, and it is expected that a number of those will be cloud offerings from RIM. It is unclear what RIM might be planning, but it does look as if the PlayBook will be different from its competitors, which we believe could be what it needs to be successful.