BES

Rogers cuts BES data prices. Enough to quell the complaints?

by alec on October 7, 2008

Rogers have cut BlackBerry users who use the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) a break, and not a moment too soon it seems. Data plan prices for BlackBerry users with BES are marginally higher than for BlackBerry users on the BlackBerry Internet Server (BIS), but not nearly as unreasonable as before.

Under Rogers’ new pricing scheme, Flex Rate pricing is available for everyone. On BlackBerry with BIS, any Smartphone or iPhone 3G, customers pay prices ranging from $30/month for 500M to $85 for 5G split into 5 tiers. For the privilege of owning and managing your own BES at your own location, however, you pay an extra $15/month on whatever tier you use.

While more economical, and thus much more palatable, than the previous pricing model, it still leaves the question open as to why there is any difference at all. How come 1′s and 0′s coming from my enterprise server cost more than 1′s and 0′s from Rogers’ BIS? After all, isn’t Rogers’ marginal cost to deliver data from a server they own and operate (the BIS) higher than from a server owned and operated by enterprise (the BES)?

Presumably purchasing agents in major corporations everywhere are asking the same question.

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BlackBerry brain surgery… it worked!

by alec on April 2, 2008

Amazing. After a long and frustrating period, my BlackBerry has been restored to its former fabulousness. I had lots of help from the team at RIM, but ultimately the only solution was a total and complete reset. We reflashed the BB with the latest software, removed my BlackBerry Enterprise Server account, and rebuilt everything from the ground up.

So what happened? I'm guessing that one of the many pieces of software I've installed and removed on this device resulted in some kind of corruption on the device. BES, being a good corporate tool, backs up each berry's configuration and data. The several attempts I made to resolve the problem by flashing the device only failed, because as soon as it was connected up to the BES again, my old corrupted files were loaded back onto the device. The only solution was a complete restart.

Many thanks to Jim Courtney, and the folks at RIM who helped me with this. Here's one little geek who's learned to take it easy on loading oddball software onto his BlackBerry.

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Blackberry Exchange Server Exploit

August 7, 2006

In other Blackberry news, Wired reports that a Blackberry exploit, to be shown at Las Vegas’ DefCon hacker convention, allows unauthorized access to corporate networks running the Blackberry Enterprise Server.Â It’s unsurprising that Blackberry would become a target.Â The devices are widespread, and most serious users use the BES.Â Moreover, the device is powerful enough [...]

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Challenges ahead for RIM

October 17, 2005

Rich Tehrani has a great post on the challenges ahead for RIM. I had a very similar conversation with a close friend at RIM about a year ago. What I told him was that usability, especially, was going to bite them hard if Microsoft and others put their minds to solving the email problem. Rich’s [...]

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