1:00 AM
Paul B
I have recently been talking a lot about Exchange 2010, and how I am the process of upgrading my company from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010. One of the only problems we ran into was with Blackberry. We were using Blackberry Professional Server 4.1.4 and it would not work with Exchange 2010. Our support was expiring, and we didn’t really want to pay to renew. However, we still had a few Blackberry users, so what were we to do?
Well, lucky for us Blackberry has released their Blackberry Enterprise Server Express for FREE! That is right! It is free baby! This version can run directly on top of Microsoft Exchange if you want and support up to 75 users. However, if you already have a dedicated server for BES like we do, you can support 2000+ users with it. Why the hell would you pay for their full version?
We installed it, and it is working magically with our new Exchange 2010 server without issue. Setup was easy, and administration is very similar to the full version of Blackberry Enterprise. Another cool thing is you or your users don’t need to fork over the additional cash for Enterprise data plans, any Internet enabled plans will work! Here is a list of advantages from the Blackberry Comparison chart:
Works with any Internet enabled Blackberry data plan
- Free software and CALs
- Enables businesses to cost effectively expand the number of Blackberry smart phone users while maintaining security and control over both corporate liable and individual-liable users
- Installs directly on the existing email server if you want
If your company has been spending money every year on licenses, and support this might be a good option to save a few extra bucks, and spend it in other needed areas of your infrastructure.
Besides me, are any of you guys using BESx yet? Like it? Dislike it? Afraid to move to it? Lets hear your take in the comments.
