The main advantage RIM has—and arguably the one thing that has kept it in the game up to now—is the existing BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) infrastructure. But, if the new BlackBerry 10 (BB10) devices don’t work with the current BES platform, BB10 could be dead on arrival.

Galen Gruman of Infoworld explains in detail the chaos that awaits the launch of BlackBerry 10. The current BlackBerry Enterprise Server—BES 5.0.3—is done, except for a maintenance update that will take it to BES 5.0.4. The existing BES will not be able to manage BB10, and customers will be forced to migrate completely to BB10 all at once—scrapping the existing BES and replacing it—or they’ll have to run a BB10 infrastructure in parallel with the current legacy BES system, and manage them both simultaneously.