A lot of our customers use Blackberries in their businesses these days but many, due to the cost of the Enterprise or the Professional software are not taking advantage “over the air” synchronization, which synchronizes your mailbox without physically connecting the Blackberry to a desktop computer. When Outlook is updated, the device is updated wirelessly. This eliminates the need to connect the Blackberry to your PC in order to update your calendar, contact or task list. Managing your inbox is also easier as you no longer need to delete emails in both Outlook and the Blackberry.
Recently Blackberry released Blackberry Enterprise Server Express for the universally admired price of $0.
The other great news is that it runs on a 64-bit operating system like Windows 2008 (including Small Business Server) and supports Exchange 2003, 2007 and 2010. This greatly reduces the investment in hardware as we have frequently purchased an additional server to host the Blackberry Enterprise software. Now we can install it directly on an Exchange or Small Business Server 2008.
Besides the advantages of updating your Outlook mailbox wirelessly, the Enterprise software also enables you to manage the smartphones in your organization remotely. One great feature is the ability to remotely wipe a stolen device so that confidential information is not compromised.
You can add as many devices as your server can handle but Blackberry recommends a limit of 75.
What the Express version does not include is the high availability option (which, in the event of a server failure, allows you to seamlessly continue mail delivery using another server), monitoring and support for Blackberry MVS (which is a software package that allows you to integrate Blackberries with a PBX system). The Express version also contains 35 IT policies versus
