A year after revealing a major upgrade of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server was underway, Research in Motion this week finally fleshed out what the new version will do, and put a delivery date on it.
For attendees at RIM's annual BlackBerry conference, Wireless Enterprise Symposium, it's welcome news.
The BES (pronounced "bez) is the locus of an enterprise BlackBerry deployment. All communications funnel through the BES, it works with the back-end mail servers Exchange or Lotus Notes, and provides some tools for administering and managing BlackBerry devices, users and the BES itself.
The upcoming release of BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0, codenamed Argon, is a critical piece in RIM's effort to make its software and smartphones a foundation for next generation mobile applications. For that to happen, enterprise BlackBerry administrators need to move visibility into the BES. They also need tools to simplify and automate deploying and managing scores of mobile applications, including line of business programs. Finally, they need improvements in BES to make it more reliable and scaleable if it's to be the linchpin for mission critical mobile business and communications.
All of these requirements are being addressed in BES 5.0.
"This is a major step forward," says Raymond Gayoso, senior systems engineer, for Fidelity Investments in Boston, which has 15,000 BlackBerry handhelds deployed. BlackBerries may start out as mainly e-mail devices, but over time, Gayoso says, they become increasingly important to business users, who see and demand ways to use it beyond scheduling meetings or responding to an urgent e-mail. "As people do more and more business on them, we need the reliability of 5.0," he says.
At the conference, RIM executives said the current software build of the 5.0 release is already running at 10 different customer sites worldwide, part of an "early adopter" testing program. The regular beta test will start "in a couple of months," says Alan Panezic, RIM's vice president for software product management. RIM hopes to release 5.0 by year-end, but that will depend on the quality of the code, Panezic says.
- Sponsored Resource:Are you ready for virtualization? Try the sever assessment tool.
- Sponsored Resource:Stay at home servers. Learn more about a home server for your family.
- Sponsored Resource:Get the communications, data, and security a business needs in one neat package. Learn more.
- Sponsored Resource:Learn more about ultra light notebooks from Asus and the best warranty in the industry.
- Sponsored Resource:Thinking about a new Laptop? Lenovo has models to meet everyone's needs.
- Sponsored Resource:Get the truth about remanufactured ink. Learn more from HP.
- Sponsored Resource:Six smart ways to grow small business IT
News For Your Business
- DRM-Free ITunes for BlackBerry Users
- Android and Symbian Should Unite, Analyst Says
- Open-network Chief Sees Verizon Following His Lead
- Project CrackBerry
- Five Free BlackBerry Downloads
Community Comments