Research In Motion (RIM) has announced BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365.

This is a new RIM-hosted online service for midsized businesses and enterprises that extends Microsoft Exchange Online to BlackBerry smartphones, and allows organizations to self-manage their BlackBerry deployments in the cloud. An open beta for the service has launched in over 30 countries.

Managed service providers, systems integrators, carriers, resellers and other partners can also use the cloud service to manage BlackBerry deployments on behalf of their customers.

A number of Fortune 500 customers and several government agencies in the US participated in an early access program and are among the many organizations that already plan to use the service.

Microsoft Office 365 customers can sign up for the BlackBerry Business Cloud Services beta here. The cloud-based service is available for no additional charge to Microsoft Office 365 Midsized Businesses and Enterprises plan subscribers and works with BlackBerry smartphones on business or consumer data plans.

Key features include:

• Access to Microsoft Exchange Online email, calendar and organizer data from a BlackBerry smartphone
• BlackBerry Balance technology, which presents a unified view of work and personal content on a BlackBerry smartphone while keeping the content separate and secure
• A web-based console for IT administrators to provision, manage and secure BlackBerry smartphones from anywhere
• Online access to employee self-service smartphone security functions, allowing users to reset a device password or remotely lock or wipe a device in the event of loss or theft