Amidst all the bad publicity that Blackberry Ltd in its quarterly report, a little known positive is the 32% increase in companies purchasing and installing its servers. This gain may be the key for the company's long term survival, despite the USD4.7 billion offer from private equity firms would work or not.

The clients that had installed or were in the process of testing nearly 25,000 of its signature enterprise servers used to manage networks for corporate smartphones, be it for BlackBerry, iPhone or Android. These were the numbers for August, up from 19,000 back in July. This was in stark contrast to the 45% plunge in the sales of its smartphones and the reported USD965 million loss in the second quarter for the company.

BlackBerry had the large hold on business from banks, law firms and companies who subscribed to their smartphones and the email servers that securely run them. As more and more employees opt to use their iPhones at work, this created a 'bring your own device' trend in the workplace.

One of its latest developments, according to BlackBerry Senior Vice President Peter Devenyi, the company would be unveiling a new Internet-based software to manage devices during the conference.