BES monitoring and troubleshooting software Zenprise today announced support for 64-bit servers. Version 4.0, going for $35/user for 1000 users this July also provides a bit of backwards compatability, offering native support for Windows Server 2003 x64. Also, if you’re at WES, they’re hosting a quiz at booth 543 every hour on the hour called the Mobile Messaging Challenge – show off your know-how and win some sweet prizes.
Tag: zenprisePage 2 of 2
Zenprise upgrades for 64-bit
0 Comments
If you’ve listened to our podcasts, you’ve probably heard of Zenprise. They create software for monitoring and troubleshooting BlackBerrys on an enterprise scale. Their software monitors BES, carrier availability, Active Directory health, network performance, and a great deal more, as well as alerts the correct staff when a problem is noticed. They just announced Zenprise 3.3, which enhances detection of user-specific errors and more general carrier issues, and also adds flexibility over which system their softwares will monitor.
The BBCool podcast has two guest speakers this week. Rob Woodbridge from Rove Mobile runs us through their freshly-launched PCMobilizr, then Ahmed Datoo gives us Zenprise’s perspective of the recent outage on AT&T. Aside from that, we’ve got a few 8110 launches, a few BlackBerry Professional Software launches, a new toy for streaming your tunes, and a bunch of other stuff. Check it out!
XML remains a cruel mistress. Anyone who can crack our podcast feed and figure out why iTunes isn’t updating it will get a kickass prize and a big fat kiss from yours truly.
Related viewing
Rove’s presentation at DEMO
Today BoxTone has busted out a new asset management module, which will let BES admins track volume, inventory and security of BlackBerry devices, as well as pinpoint inactive BlackBerrys which are uselessly draining your enterprise’s budget. They’ve got a slew of other modules, including one for help desk personnel. BoxTone is a BES administration system very similar to Zenprise with a few twists. For one, they support Lotus Domino servers in addition to Exchange. Secondly, BoxTone has a core product for which you can buy additional modules that expand the basic functionality, this way BoxTone can be tailored to whatever your BES setup is like.
There’s been some debate over the differences between the Zenprise and BoxTone (mainly revolving around the presence of a web-based interface), but we’re going to be taking a closer look at both real soon just to see what the key selling points are. If you’ve got any experience with either, feel free to drop a comment.
Zenprise has announced a partnership with Keynote in order to keep a closer eye on carrier network status. This fits in great with Zenprise’s established troubleshooting system, as monitoring stability is a big part of what they do. Keynote has a pretty robust system in place for gaging call quality and network status, and we’re sure the service being passed on to customers through Zenprise will be top notch. We talked with Zenprise not too long ago about what they do, so if you’re in the BlackBerry admin end of things, check it out.
Since covering Zenprise’s troubleshooting software back in July, I’ve had a chance to talk to some of the folks there about what they do. In a nutshell, Zenprise offers diagnostic tools to backend IT staff and dynamic troubleshooting flowcharts to front-line technical support in order to keep the company’s BlackBerry operations running smoothly. We would have liked to do a review, but we don’t run a BES at BBCool, and even if we did, we’re all so darned clever that we could figure out our own technical problems without some fancy-pants software package. That being said, we hooked up with the Paul Hinsberg, senior server engineer for the County of Alameda, California, who has been using Zenprise’s BlackBerry software since early beta testing. The county uses a little over a hundred BlackBerrys that have to be handled between 8 people.
Continue reading ‘Run-through: Zenprise for BlackBerry’
A reader just let us know about a Zenprise report they were going over, which included some crazy numbers about e-mail and stress in the workplace.
The survey found that 36% of respondents indicated that their job is ‘stressful’ or ‘extremely stressful’. However, when email is down, 74% of respondents indicated that their job is ‘stressful’ or ‘extremely stressful’. Only air traffic controllers and police officers were viewed as having jobs more stressful than that of an IT administator whose email system is down!
Wow. Respect to the IT admins out there who are dealing with stress levels comparable to that of cops. The report had a few pointers that might help keep that blood pressure down, like “be ready to assemble a cross-functional SWAT team to quickly resolve BlackBerry issues” and “consistently monitor & audit your Active Directory infrastructure”.
Thanks, Chris!
It’s not exactly a shocker, but an Osterman Research report comissioned by Zenprise shows that “95 per cent of the 76 messaging-oriented North American decision-makers that responded to the survey said the senior managers in their organizations have BlackBerry devices”. On top of that, 65% of middle managers have a BlackBerry at their side and for half of the organizations, traveling personnel are also using them. In the long view, the report’s forecasting 100 million enterprise users by 2010. The report’s main point, however, is that since such a high percentage of of top-level executives are using the devices, IT professionals are feeling the extra pressure from above to make absolutely sure that service is up and potentially cutting into their time on other responsibilities. Does this translate into a requirement for full-time BlackBerry administrators?
Zenprise has released the newest version (3.1) of their automated troubleshooting solution. The software lets you monitor RIM’s side of things, the carrier’s network, individual devices, your BlackBerry Enterprise Server, Exchange, Global Catalogue servers and Domain Controllers, DNS resuoltion, and the LAN/WAN. The price tag is $35 per user up to 1,000 users.
“Downtime is a significant expense for any company,” said Michael Osterman, principal of Osterman Research. “Solutions like Zenprise that can resolve downtime incidents quickly are an important addition to any BlackBerry environment.”
A handy video tour of the software is available over here.
Press release and new features behind the jump.
