Posted on September 28, 2009, at 9:13 am .
IBM has been offering BES solutions for businesses, including management and support, but until now it has had no standard pricing, according to Dan Papes, vice president of IBM Mobile Enterprise Services. That’s changed however and businesses now know up front just how much they’re going to pay per user.
The services offered by IBM include system management, secondary end-user support, integration with corporate back-end systems, and monitoring services. Depending of course on the type of support needed, businesses should expect to pay between $15-18 a month, per user. Papes says he believes this will reduce the overall cost of ownership of the service from 15-30% for most businesses. “They look at deploying another 5,000 BlackBerrys to their field force and they’re not sure what it costs them. We can tell them what it will cost,” Papes said.
Check out the full article at InfoWorld.com.
Via MStrawder from PinStack.com
Posted on September 15, 2009, at 10:28 am .
RIM, in partnership with Zain Saudi Arabia and Alcatel-Lucent, have launched the BlackBerry solution in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Alcatel-Lucent is leveraging its strong local presence in the region to provide Zain Saudi Arabia with the project management, end-to-end implementation, installation, commissioning and on-going support for delivering the BlackBerry solution to the Saudi market. With Alcatel-Lucent managing integration and deployment, Zain Saudi Arabia can focus on managing subscribers and providing adequate customer care.
When the program launches, Zain will be offering its customers the BlackBerry Curve 8900, BlackBerry Bold 9000, BlackBerry Pearl 8120 and BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220. Customers will also have access to BES and BIS.
Hopefully Saudi Arabia will also be able to get their hands on some of the latest devices that will be launching this fall in North America.
Posted on June 22, 2009, at 10:31 am .
You’ve spent time building up your Autotext entries to make it really easy to fire off a “thank you” or “you’re welcome.” You’ve invested time in building up your Password Keeper with entries for the Jonas Brothers Fan Club and you’ve got 50+ friends on your BlackBerry Messenger. Life is good, especially because you’re on a BES and your contacts, calendars, tasks and notes are being synced back to the server. Now, a new OS pops up and you want to update. You get IT’s blessing to do this, but then you remember those parts of your BlackBerry that are going to be wiped out. When you plug your phone into your computer, fire up Desktop Manager and try to back up certain parts of your device, you get this:
Nan’s Backup and Restore on BES
Posted on June 19, 2009, at 2:13 pm .
Kuwait now has access to the full range of BlackBerry services. VIVA, Alcatel-Lucent and RIM have announced the launch of devices such as the BlackBerry Curve 8900 and BlackBerry Bold as well as service with BlackBerry Enterprise Server and BlackBerry Internet Service.
Based on its distribution agreement with RIM, Alcatel-Lucent is leveraging its strong local presence in the region to provide VIVA with end-to-end support services for the BlackBerry solution. With Alcatel-Lucent managing integration and deployment, VIVA can focus on delivering customer facing services, enabling the operator to quickly meet market demand.
This trend is indicative of the Middle Eastern strategy with carriers and RIM. While the Middle East provides ample opportunity for low end devices and prepaid solutions, the majority of Middle Eastern countries are getting the “luxury line” of BlackBerry devices such as the 8900 and Bold. I’m curious to see if carriers begin selling Pearl devices in these regions.
Posted on June 2, 2009, at 7:31 am .
Super Moderator Joolie at the Port3101 forum answers a question that BES administrators have been asked many times: “What can my BES administrator see on my personal device if I connect it to the BES?”
The article doesn’t seem to specify whether Joolie is running BES 5.0. Some administrators will wait for the 2nd service pack before committing to a full upgrade.
What syncs/is stored/is accessed by the BES includes:
* Corporate email
* Corporate calendar
* Corporate PIM data (address book, memo pad, tasks)
* Browser bookmarks
* Password Keeper data (although this cannot be accessed in any way, even when restored to another device, without the PK password)
* PIN messaging data (including the actual message sent/received); logging turned off by default
* Phone call data (date/time of call, number called/received, length of call); loggined turned on by default
* Text message data (including the actual verbage of the text message); logging turned off by default
* Blackberry Messenger data (this one is extremely klunky to get and I don’t know a single BES Admin that turns this one on)
* All applications installed on the device (games, stock apps, etc.)
* OS version installed on the device (so we’ll know if you upgraded to a beta OS!)
In addition anything that is a part of automatic wireless backup could *technically* be viewed by performing a restore to a new device.
What a BES Admin can’t see:
* BIS email messages (I *might* be able to see what service books you have, but cannot read the messages)
* 3rd party IM messages (Yahoo!, MSN, etc), although I can see which of these applications you have installed.
* BlackBerry Messenger contact names/PINs
[Source]
Posted on May 5, 2009, at 9:58 am .
Neverfail is a disaster recovery solution for mobile messaging on BES, that protects users from losing important data. Their latest announcement includes support for the Novell GroupWise messaging system.
Neverfail protects against planned and unplanned outages of messaging servers, SQL configuration databases and the BES itself. With the option to deploy locally for high availability or remotely for disaster recovery, Neverfail provides a single solution that does not require the re-architecture of existing systems or upgrades of software to maintain delivery of e-mail if components in the infrastructure fail.
Posted on May 4, 2009, at 4:30 pm .
Google Apps Connector for BES is a piece of software developed by Google that sits on the BES and pushes your Google services to your BlackBerry. The software allows users to access Gmail, Google Calendar and Contacts using the built-in BlackBerry applications they already know and love.
This latest news from Google is intended to help small to medium sized businesses save costs on email services, while improving the overall BES email experience. Users can now instantly receive Gmail messages within the built-in email client on their Blackberry and they can continue to use the same shortcuts to manage their BlackBerry messages.
Continue reading about Google Apps Connector for BES
Posted on May 4, 2009, at 1:47 pm .
HP and RIM have announced they are establishing a strategic alliance to deliver a portfolio of solutions for enterprise. The solutions, which include support for BES 5.0, are focused on increasing service levels, reducing operations costs and improving productivity for customers.
HP will be demonstrating these new solutions, HP CloudPrint and HP Operations Manager, at WES so I’ll be sure to keep you updated.
Click through to read about these new solutions from HP and RIM
Posted on May 4, 2009, at 5:21 am .
Zenprise is announcing the launch of Device Manager, a new module for Zenprise MobileManager that enables organizations to remotely manage BlackBerry devices. The system will pinpoint the exact location of a missing BlackBerry, while also enabling remote management of BlackBerry devices.
This announcement from Zenprise represents a significant jump in empowering enterprise to mobilize their business. MobileManager will help desk personnel and BlackBerry administrators to find lost or stolen devices, proactively monitor and diagnose device issues and audit devices for third party applications – all leading to significant cost savings, improved service levels and corporate compliance.
Click through to see a full breakdown of new admin and location services from Zenprise
Posted on April 28, 2009, at 4:14 pm .
I just got an email from Ahmed at Zenprise about the BES outages today in Europe. Today, a Zenprise customer in the UK got an alert from Zenprise at 13:32 that the RIM SRP network went down. That network looked to be back up and running around 15:00. One of Zenprise’s US customers supports users in Europe and received an alert at roughly the same time, but service for them was restored at 14:13.
Zenprise helps BES administrators cut down support tickets by using automation. This system was well demonstrated today.
One of the automated diagnostics that their product runs before triggering an alert is to run a network protocol to port 3101 to test RIM connectivity (that’s the port the BES server talks to the RIM network on). It looks like one of the advertised IP addresses of the RIM network went down, and the traffic was rerouted to the secondary IP address. The propagation of the DNS changes may have taken some time, which is why some customers saw service restore faster than others.
Thanks again to Zenprise for the information.
