Research In Motion (RIM) is targeting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with the roll-out of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) Express solution.
According to the company, BlackBerry has two million SME users and plans to make its services platform accessible, secure, and affordable to a larger market in SA.
Martin Fick, BlackBerry technical account manager, explains the BES Express is a software solution designed to integrate BlackBerry smartphones with a small business's messaging and data network.
BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express synchronises e-mail, calendar entries, shared contacts, tasks and memos. It uses push technology to deliver instant messages and information to BlackBerry smartphones and wirelessly updates corporate information.
Businesses with an existing Microsoft Exchange Server or Windows Small Business Server can use it and will be charged a fixed monthly data subscription. There are no licence fees for the actual software.
According to Fick, the solution is cost-effective for small businesses with up to 75 users because of the unlimited fixed monthly data cost. Each user will also have access to the company's intranet from the BlackBerry device.
Fick points out that BlackBerry has boosted security technology for the solution. “BlackBerry Enterprise Server takes the e-mail through the firewall and pushes it to our relay to the mobile carriers and to the device. This provides a secure connection between the corporate network and mobile device. All network traffic is compressed and secured with 256-bit encryption.”
The BlackBerry Administration Service provides Web-based access to manage smartphones within the organisation. It can delegate tasks with six pre-configured IT administration roles.
“There is business-sensitive information residing within smartphones and each password allocated to all the devices can be centrally managed on BES Express. If the person types in the wrong password 10 times, the data on the device gets wiped. And if a device is lost, the administrator can remotely wipe the device,” explains Fick.
In addition, all data on the device gets backed up to BlackBerry's data base and deleted data can be remotely restored by the company at any time.
Around 35 security policies have been deployed to enable the IT administrator to manage device access. The administrator has the power to remotely disable video cameras, Bluetooth, SMS services and applications.
“From a security perspective nothing has been compromised,” adds Fick.
Shaun Hathrill, BlackBerry technical account manager, says: “The endpoint of the corporate network is the weakest device in the chain. We've focused on making the BlackBerry device as secure as possible.”
Hathrill indicates that the IT administrator has complete permission control over what applications are downloaded and used and how corporate information is accessed. IT can control all inbound and outbound communications as a way of cost-cutting for SMEs, he notes.
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