Posted on September 16, 2009, at 10:39 am .
w2bi have announced the availability of AetherPal 2.3, which allows administrative support for all Blackberry devices.
AetherPal 2.3 features:
- Administrators can manage all mobile devices controlled by a BES Server
- AetherPal device enrollment info is taken directly from the BES Server
- Simple Banner Notification support for BlackBerry devices which allows administrators to schedule banners or initiate them immediately
- Crystal Report Integration which enables admins to generate reports and export them into Crystal Reports
- AetherPal 2.3 allows both admins and end users to initiate Remote Control sessions. Users initiate the session by clicking the AetherPal Remote control icon and the device sets up a data connection with the admin.
AetherPal can support multiple operating systems, a feature that has been widely requested in the industry due to new smartphones constantly being introduced into the ecosystem. These multiple OSs are supported even if some are managed by BES and/or Microsoft SCMDM 2008.
When choosing BlackBerry administrative support software, it’s important to be informed about all the potential solutions as each provides a competitive advantage that may apply to your organization. For example, Zenprise and BoxTone are two BlackBerry administrative tools that provide similar services but both have advantages that make them better for certain organizations.
More information available from the AetherPal site.
Are there any organizations out there that are currently using AetherPal?
Posted on September 9, 2009, at 12:01 pm .
The latest product from Zenprise, MobileManager 5.0, features a wide array of features to help an organization get the visibility they need and save costs by having a complete picture of their mobile infrastructure.
MobileManager 5.0 integrates support monitoring, expense management, security, and device management across multiple smartphone platforms including BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile and Palm.
A typical case scenario involves a large organization with a few thousand devices on the network. With MobileManager 5.0, this organization has access to the following features regarding their mobile infrastructure:
- Identify smartphones on the network that aren’t being used. This allows the organization to reclaim significant costs by disabling these unused devices.
- View smartphone usage details in order to optimize their employees’ wireless plans.
- See what carriers are being used on the network. This data can be used to leverage volume discounts with the carrier of choice.
- Identify smartphone malware and spyware in real time.
The solution also incorporates a host of features that should be standard with any mobile admin product:
- Ensure compliance of critical corporate security policies (e.g., content encryption enabled, camera and Bluetooth disabled, etc.)
- Remotely lock a device or wipe smartphones clean of corporate data
- Identify all software installed on an individual smartphone or find all smartphones with particular software installed
- Track application version information
With all of this data, Zenprise should be able to provide the industry with some really fascinating white papers and research reports.
For example, if their clients agree, we could anonymously survey thousands of BlackBerry users to see what software they carry on their device. This would provide the industry with an analysis of where the content market is heading in the enterprise space. Also, we could figure out what carriers are the cheapest for enterprise, and perhaps come to a decision on who is the leading brand. This news may also put pressure on some carriers to change their pricing in order to be more competitive.
MobileManager 5.0 will be available in October.
Posted on August 3, 2009, at 4:31 pm .
By Ahmed Datoo, VP marketing, Zenprise
Zenprise is partnering with BlackBerry Cool to address how to resolve some of the most common BlackBerry activation problems. Through a series of 10 articles, readers will learn how to identify key log file errors, tests and configurations critical to identifying the root cause of enterprise activation issues. The articles will explore common failures in the four unique stages of the activation process: stage 1 – activation, stage 2 – verifying encryption, stage 3 – receiving services, and stage 4 – slow synchronization process. Special thanks to Brian Bernard at RIM for providing the content for this troubleshooting series.
In this second article, Zenprise addresses a stage 1 activation problem where the BlackBerry device continues to display an error message, ?€œplease contact your system administrator.?€�
Continue reading how to troubleshoot common BlackBerry activation errors
Posted on July 22, 2009, at 12:39 pm .
by Ahmed Datoo, VP of Marketing for Zenprise
The widespread consumerization and general adoption of smartphones in the workplace is adding another layer of IT complexity. It’s important to remember that carrying a smartphone is similar to having a computer in your pocket. Therefore, these devices face the same security threats as a PC. Along with network vulnerabilities that stem from malware embedded Websites and email attachments, applications are also at risk.
The increased popularity and availability of smartphone applications creates security implications for employees who increasingly download these apps onto their corporate phones. Today’s enterprise is ill equipped to handle the expected wave of device issues resulting from rogue applications. A rogue application could cause a security threat by pulling sensitive data from the network.
Continue reading about security and compliance issues facing today’s corporations
Posted on June 23, 2009, at 9:55 am .
Next Tuesday, June 30th, Zenprise will be hosting a free Webinar highlighting five best practices for managing heterogeneous smartphone environments.
Drew Collier, Systems Operation Manager at Shook, Hardy, Bacon LLP, will share best practice policies and technologies for addressing the support of heterogeneous mobile devices. He will discuss how to enable multi-device support while delivering on the promise of mobile productivity. Attendees will learn how to:
- Support different devices without burdening IT
- Define multi-device support processes for the help desk
- Modify organizational processes to provision, manage, and support different smartphones
- Provide comparable service levels across all smartphones
- Reduce trouble tickets by more than 50 percent
- Reduce mean time to repair by more than 70 percent
- Realize between 100 percent and 600 percent productivity improvements.
Be sure to watch the Webinar for Ahmed Datoo, vice president of product management at Zenprise, because he will be sharing the latest industry research on the growth of consumer-owned smartphones in the enterprise space. He’ll also conduct a live demo highlighting how to manage and monitor heterogeneous smartphone environments.
To register, visit the Webinar page and leave your contact details.
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.
Posted on April 8, 2009, at 2:55 pm .
Zenprise today announced findings from an Osterman Research study that reports that most enterprise IT departments are not equipped to handle the rapid increase in smartphone adoption. In fact, less than 40 percent of respondents express confidence in their mobile management platform.
Osterman Research forecasts that the proportion of the North American workforce equipped with employer-supplied mobile devices will double from 23 percent of the workforce in 2008 to 46 percent by 2011. If left unmanaged, rapid smartphone adoption can result in serious problems including lost productivity and revenue, as well as escalating support costs.
A synopsis of the key report findings include:
- Only 40% of organizations expressed confidence that all elements of their mobile messaging platform are fully protected against downtime.
- 60% of decision makers expressed modest, minimal or no confidence that they can protect their mobile infrastructure from downtime.
- 33% of organizations do not offer an SLA and have no plans to do so.
Despite a clear lack of confidence in IT’s current mobile infrastructure, they are being asked to support a greater variety and number of mobile platforms. Software that can automatically troubleshoot mobile user issues and simplify management are fast becoming a staple of the data center.
Click through to read the press release from Zenprise
Posted on May 20, 2008, at 1:51 pm .
Keeping with the ‘Long Weekend’ meme, we’ve decided to round up every audio interview from WES 2008. If you weren’t there, you missed quite a sight: Simon went completely bananas interviewing as many companies as possible, sometimes two at once. In honor of that dedication, you can find no less than six interviews in one post! Of course, you can always subscribe to our podcasts/interviews via RSS or iTunes…
Click here for interviews!
Posted on May 13, 2008, at 6:28 pm .
So, we chatted up Zenprise’s Ahmed Datoo about recent 64-bit update in version 4.0, and branch off into 64-bit servers in general. Take a listen over here, and be sure to keep an eye on our Best of WES podcast widget for the latest uploads.
Listen to the Zenprise interview
