All in all, you can say that the two of us are certainly BlackBerry fans and therefore a visit to the RIM HQ has been high on our wish-list for many years. So, during BrainShare Amsterdam in May, we created that opportunity after talking to Slav Koziarski, the Product Manager for BES for GroupWise.  We scheduled a visit to Waterloo (CA) at the end of August.

 

Preparing such a visit creates its own dynamics: first of all, there is the simple thing of finding dates when you will be able to meet as many RIM people as possible. Second, there are NDA's to sign – it is almost certain that you will have to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement for whatever organisation you will visit in the North America's – so we had to go through this process for RIM as well.

 

In a way this is bad news for you, as one of our readers: we have seen more at the RIM HQ than we can disclose in this article.  We would probably be shot through the head by their legal department if we were to talk about certain projects that we saw. That said, there is no shortage of what we are allowed to talk about, so please read on.

Finally: It's August, so on our way to Canada!

Just after returning form our normal holidays we both packed again, took the plane to Toronto (CA) and enjoyed the traffic jams around Toronto on our way to Waterloo (CA). A surprising city in a rural area with about 100.000 inhabitants and two (!) universities: the University of Waterloo and the Wilfrid Laurier University. RIM employs more than 4.000 people and many of them are based in one of the 20 (!) buildings spread out over Waterloo – this includes the  original, and now one of three factories where the well know BlackBerry devices are manufactured.

 

We met Slav at 185 Columbia Street West, however we were immediately transferred to one of the other buildings for our first series of meetings with staff responsible for training, certification, future vision, MVS (Mobile Voice System) and a number of other subjects. Gifts from Austria and the Netherlands as well as business cards were exchanged.  All of these meetings went  well, some of these results of these meetings will be discussed in this article, other results will become clearer some time in the future.

BES 5.0.1 – General Availability in October 2010?!

Let us start with good news: the rumor in the streets is: if nothing goes wrong, the BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0.1 for GroupWise will go into the “general availability” state in October 2010 – finally! Mind you, this is NOT an official statement from RIM, we all should remember this is still just scheduled for "Fall 2010", as there might be hick-ups, but things look quite OK as we have seen ourselves. This version is full of wonderful new features and enhancements that many of us have been waiting for. The reasons for the delays were multiple, both on the RIM, as well as the Novell, end. With GroupWise 8 SP2 the SOAP functionality now includes all the necessary SOAP enhancements and fixes that will allow the BES 5.0.1 to get the right data from the GW 8.0.2 POA. There is no more need for the older client-based API calls, as everything is based on SOAP. That is really why GroupWise 7 will no longer be supported with BES5.

 

Let us have a look at some of the most important features:

• Full SOAP integration (no more API connections)
• Multiple Personal Address Book synchronisation
• Over-the-air Software Upgrades
• High Availability with Automated Failover
• Mobile Application Rollout and Management plus full control of all settings of the device
• Blackberry Transporter, a powerful un-interrupting Migration Tool
• New Web-based Administration Console with Role-based Access Control
• Simplified Security Model, 35 New IT Policies
• Job Management, Scheduling, and Throttling
• Additional SNMP Instrumentation & Improved Monitoring and Alerts
• Localisation (EFIGS)
• End-User Web-based Console for Self-Service Synchronisation Control (e.g. which Address Books)

You can get to learn more about this and experience all the new features in our BES training,  see www.open-horizons.net/training.

 

More Results: A Lot of News Coming Up!

As mentioned, we did not only have meetings with the BES GroupWise division but also Product Management and Senior Managers of BlackBerry Technical Support Services, Certification Program, Global Learning Solutions (Training) and Strategy.

 

We specifically requested a meeting with the team responsible for the BlackBerry Technical Support Services, as we wanted to learn more about their support offerings. From our own experience, we know they can certainly deliver good quality and fast support and therefore, in our opinion, it makes sense for many organisations to sign a support contract with RIM, just as they often do with Novell Support. This is obviously important when the BlackBerry solutions are run in a enterprise and mission critical environment, however also be considered in smaller SMB environments.

 

A RIM support contract for your BES server includes license upgrade protection as well as direct access to second level support from RIM. In many cases organisations obtain their RIM BES licenses from their local phone providers, however we have noticed that it is often difficult for these operators to provide fast and accurate support for your BES. This is due to the simple fact that the core business of these operators is to support mobile devices rather than in-house BES servers. And this is even more true as these BES servers are connected to some kind of collaboration system (Exchange, Notes or GroupWise) to which these operators have no access,  nor do they even want to support.

 

Our next meeting was with the Global Learning Solutions (Training) team. They were clearly impressed by our interest and the specialised training that Open Horizons offers. As a result Open Horizons will work more closely with them to develop and deploy BES GroupWise training in EMEA.

In our next meeting we got to see the exiting BlackBerry Office Vision, which is unfortunately still confidential and thus under NDA, and the BlackBerry Mobile Voice System (MVS) V5, which is in essence one of the starting points of this vision. The MVS is a BES Add-On and it literally extends your PBX and desk phone to your BlackBerry Smartphone. Calls can even be made over Wi-Fi at work, at home, or Wi-Fi hotspots and you can take the desk phone features and number with you away from the desk.

 

As an example: you can call a colleague on his internal extension number from any coffee shop with free Wi-Fi access at no cost at all. You can have a Single Enterprise Identity  connected to your corporate phone number and you will not miss one call while you are away, as these calls are routed to your BlackBerry automatically. The good news is that you do not have to install any additional client software: just dial the number and the BlackBerry uses the cheapest available option. Another example: you are in a long phone call using your the desk phone, but you really need to leave for an appointment. With MVS you don't need to interrupt the call, you just transfer it to your BlackBerry and continue talking while you drive to your destination.

 

New hardware: Torch 9800 with Touchscreen

The new BlackBerry Torch 9800 is the first device running the new BlackBerry OS 6. With BlackBerry OS 6 RIM has really dug deep into the BlackBerry framework and changed it in a way to make it extremely usable with both touchscreen and keyboard at the same time. Perhaps the most valuable homescreen improvement made to BlackBerry 6 is the addition of Universal Search. This has fundamentally changed the way how can use your BlackBerry.

 

Other cool new features include:

More information about the Torch 9800 can be found at:  http://na.blackberry.com/eng/devices/blackberrytorch.jsp

 

Results: Great Progress for Open Horizons Community with RIM

For now, that is it: it is always difficult to summarise a visit of almost a week in just a few pages. However, as you will notice, our visit to RIM was highly interesting and motivating.  We will certainly use our experiences to deliver more value to the Open Horizons community, during events such as IT in Action, our Summits and of course our training sessions.  Check it out at www.open-horizons.net/training. We hope to see you there soon!