We receive questions all the time about our Blackberry service. The most common one we see is usually phrased like this:
“Why do I need your Blackberry service? I already have one from my provider.. - I even have an email address that works on my Blackberry”
When you purchase a blackberry from a wireless provider what you get is this.
1 - The actual Blackberry device
2 - A data plan so you can surf the web, send and receive emails, and an email address under the providers domain name.
This is the ‘BIS’ or Blackberry Internet Service. A keen user will even discover that they can also redirect an existing email account to their Blackberry and use that as their ‘from’ address.
Using the device in this “BIS” manner, is only using a small fraction of the Blackberry’s full potential. For instance, should you send an email from your handheld, that email will not be in your sent items folder when you get back to your computer. If you delete a messages while on the road using your Blackberry, those again will not be deleted from your desktop Outlook.
What you will get when you get back to your desktop computer is a flood of emails that you either already replied to, deleted or filed.. You will have to manually go through each message and remember what you did with each. There is no synchronization between the two.
The BES or Blackberry Enterprise Server when used through a Hosted Exchange provider such as www.exchangemymail.com however does much more.
For example, if you add a contact into either Outlook, or your Blackberry it will wirelessly sync with each, so when you get back to your Outlook desktop that contact is already in your contacts. Same for deleted mail, and sent or filed messages. These will all be wirelessly reconcilled. This enables you to use the Blackberry to it’s full potential.
This service is always bundled with an Enterprise messaging solution like Lotus Notes or Hosted Exchange - solutions that go way beyond email and provide more workflow and time management functionality to your desktop. Unlike BIS, BES allows you to syncronize all those additional features to your Blackberry.
With the combination of Hosted Exchange and the BES service, you can synchronize your entire desktop including your calendar, contacts, tasks, journal, notes and much more, with your Blackberry.
Add another user to your domain and you can share all this data, view each other’s calendars (or keep it private), accept meeting requests and basically do everything you would do when working with Outlook at your desktop.
And whatever you do on your Blackberry will be in sync with your desktop and vice-versa wirelessly, and in real time.
With some patience your thumbs get pretty nimble and pretty soon your favorite PC becomes a permanent fixture on your hip.
So while the BIS service is perfectly adequate for many individual users, the BES service used in combination with Hosted Exchange is a must for the power user or the business user. Once you actually experience the difference you’ll understand the true meaning of the term ‘Crackberry’.
