We practiced [recovery efforts] every quarter. We would drive out to a city. We would fail the city over onto our tractor trailers. We were used to taking those 100, 150 trucks that were in my fleet and actually airlifting them. Because we didn't have the air, we had to get access via bridges and roads. We had everybody cooperating. We'd been doing [practice exercises] for 10 years. Every quarter.

Can you think of a specific lesson you took away from the situation?

A lot of people don't think about continuity when they design anything, whether it's writing software or building a service, even some of the operations that you have today. They just don't think about continuity of operations, continuity of their business or protecting their IP. So it's something you need to think about all the time. What if this doesn't work? What is my backup plan? You're never going to have every scenario covered, but [if you're prepared] when you do get an event that presents itself you at least know how to go about resolving it.

We're hearing about BYOD a lot nowadays, and at CIO.com, we're writing a lot about BYOD. RIM is in a unique situation in that it's making products for IT to help them manage and embrace the changes that come with BYOD. Mobile Fusion, BES 10 and BlackBerry Balance, for example. Does RIM support non-BlackBerry devices? Can RIM employees bring in, say, a new iPhone 5 and ask IT to support it?

We have to test all the services we offer, so there are employees [using non-BlackBerry devices]. I don't have anybody bringing personal devices to work. But we do have devices that we use to test and make sure that our capabilities do work.