Research In Motion has announced the BlackBerry 10 Technical Preview program, giving selected enterprise and government customers the opportunity to begin beta testing their new smartphones.

The “by invitation” program started yesterday, with over 120 select customers enrolled.

The mix includes 64 Fortune 500 companies according to RIM, spanning a variety of industries including financial, government, insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, media, and distribution.

The technical preview program will give organisations early access to RIM’s new enterprise mobility management solution, BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, along with a limited number of pre-production BlackBerry 10 smartphones for testing within their environment.

“Beginning today, RIM will be visiting some of our enterprise and government ‘early adopters’ and getting them started with the BlackBerry 10 platform,” says Robin Bienfait, chief information officer, RIM.

“At RIM, we’ve seen the power of our new enterprise mobility management solution first-hand, and we are thrilled to share BlackBerry 10 directly with these leading organisations.”

Customers will have first-hand experience with features such as BlackBerry Balance, the BlackBerry Hub, the enterprise app store and the BlackBerry 10 platform’s secure connectivity to behind the firewall applications and data through BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10.

“Getting devices early into the hands of its best and largest enterprise customers confirms the confidence RIM has in its new BlackBerry 10 platform and is an important step leading-up to its launch,” says Kevin Burden, director of Mobility at Strategy Analytics.

“Beyond reinforcing its commitment to those loyal to the BlackBerry platform’s future, the program stands to deliver valuable real-world feedback from multiple industries before RIM takes the platform live.”