News of a free, hit the Web yesterday, but RIM officially announced the service today. The Canadian company also said that support for additional popular messaging platforms should come in the not-so-distant future.

Cloud-based BES provides options to deploy and manage BlackBerry devices in the cloud, according to RIM. But it will not offer the full IT control and management options currently available within RIM's full BES; instead, it will offer features similar to those found in RIM's slimmed-down BES Express software.

The cloud-based BES will also support RIM's upcoming , which is meant to help enterprises separate work and personal data on employees' smartphones.

The new BES offering will be hosted by RIM, and as such, customers will see a number of benefits, according to Alec Taylor, RIM's VP of software, services and enterprise marketing.

"RIM knows [the BES] product best, so you're going to get a superior experience," Taylor says. "And you're always going to have the latest, up-to-date software," since this new version of BES will be hosted by RIM and not stored on-premise, or hosted by its users.