Hosted Blackberry Express Server now available on our Hosted Exchange

Fruit Mobile are pleased to announce that we are now able to offer Blackberry Enterprise Server Express compatibility as an option in our Hosted Exchange 2010 offering.

Since first providing Hosted Exchange we knew that providing support for mobile devices was essential. Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 supports iPhone, Android, Windows Phone and any other Active Sync enabled device, right out of the box and is inclusive in the licensing costs. Blackberry however, is a different kettle of fish!

Blackberry don't (and for the time being, won't - I'll leave that discussion for another post!) support Active Sync to wirelessly synchronise Mail, Contacts and Calendar information (otherwise known as PIM - Personal Information Management). To do this, some proprietary Blackberry software must be installed in combination with the Blackberry NOC (Network Operation Centre - the source of the recent service disruption) to do this replication.
Until very recently this software (known as Blackberry Enterprise Server - BES) was:

• Expensive to purchase the Server and CAL licenses
• Expensive to deploy (it required to be installed on a separate server from the Exchange server and often meant bringing in external skills to deploy)
• Expensive to maintain the sever software
• Expensive to run - the Blackberry handsets also require a costly additional 'BES' option added to the Operator subscription.

With the success of Microsoft's ActiveSync technology being incorporated into other smartphone manufacturers devices, I am sure RIM (Research In Motion - owner/creator of the Blackberry brand) recognised that the existing cost of entry to the Blackberry solution was stifling their sales. With this in mind, an alternative was devised - BES Express. The benefits of BES Express are:

• RIM no longer charge for the server software and client licenses
• Can be deployed on the same physical server as the Microsoft Exchange email platform
• Simpler install method.
• Less expensive to run - Blackberry handsets using BES Express no longer require the expense full BES bolt-on onto the line rental. The entry level BIS (Blackberry Internet Services) bolt-on is all that is required.

So there we have a brief history of BES and BES Express - back to our story of hosting!

From the outset we deployed a Hosted Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) option in the Exchange 2010 environment. This was required to ensure support for existing Blackberry Server users could be met. Due to the license costs required by RIM and the fact that the Blackberry handsets require the expensive full BES bolt-on, the cost of running a Blackberry vs an ActiveSync device (iPhone, Android etc) just didn't stack up. Blackberry was way more expensive!

Attention was turned to somehow get Blackberry Express (a product not designed for running in a Hosted Environment) integrated and functioning on the Hosted Exchange 2010 environment. The far lower cost of Blackberry Express we know, is an attractive benefit to our clients. Its not for this blog to reveal exactly how this was achieved (there are very few - if any, other Hosted Exchange providers currently offering BES Express) but thanks to the hard work of the developers involved in the project, we can now offer Blackberry Express as an option in Hosted Exchange 2010. No more costly BES tariffs required for our clients, which I'm sure will be music to their ears!

If you are interested in finding out more about Hosted Exchange 2010 and how we can help migrate you from your existing platform please get in touch (tel: 0844 800 4218)

Hosted Blackberry Express Server now available on our Hosted Exchange