Recently, Research in Motion (RIM) released BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express, a free download that enables BlackBerry users to synchronize with their business email, calendar, contacts, tasks and more.  While it’s a great solution for smaller businesses who were looking for an alternative to purchasing the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, no cost isn’t really free because the software still requires a Blackberry (BES) server to be configured on an existing server in your network.   It must also me managed.

Most business Blackberry users know that you can still use the device with your Exchange system and activiely have your email pushed to you with some advantages over standard “POP” accounts such as immediate (push) delivery of messages (rather that waiting for the BlackBerry service to poll the POP3 provider), no opening of POP3 ports through your firewall, items sent via your BlackBerry are kept in your Sent Items in Outlook/Exchange.   For some users not being able to actively sync calendar, contacts and tasks while not cabled isn’t an issue.  Having the BlackBerry sync when attached to the PC is enough.

In a nutshell – here’s how this solution works:  When an email is received, it is forwarded immediately to a mobile provider’s BlackBerry address.  When a new mail or reply is sent from the BlackBerry, it is sent masquerading as the Exchange email, and a copy is BCC’ed to the Exchange email address. The email is then sorted into the Sent Items folder using a server side rule.  Here’s the setup:

1. Find out the PIN & IMEI
You can get this information by doing one of the following actions:
? In the BlackBerry device options or settings, click Status or
? Turn the BlackBerry device off and remove the battery. Look for the sticker on the BlackBerry device with the PIN information where the battery is usually located, usually placed above the SIM card.

2. Setup via the mobile providers web interface
You can set-up your BlackBerry directly using the BlackBerry Internet Service web interface.  Just ask your provider for the address of the web interface.

Common BIS Login sites:
?  AT&T – https://bis.na.blackberry.com/html?brand=mycingular
?  Verizon – https://bis.na.blackberry.com/html?brand=vzw
?  T-mobile – http://www.t-mobile.com/bis/
?  Sprint – https://bis.na.blackberry.com/html?brand=sprint

Register the BlackBerry via the web interface using the PIN and IMEI and create your personal BlackBerry email account.

3. Exchange Setup
?   In Active Directory Users and Computers on the Exchange Server, set up a Contact for the BLACKBERRY address  (you’ll see in the “Email accounts” section of the BlackBerry Internet Service that you can get a providers email address.)  You may want to hide this from the Global Address List after configuring everything.)
?   Set up a forward in Exchange on this account to the new “Contact” mail account.
?   Hide the new Exchange contact using the AD/Exchange manager afterwards (this part is optional – we’ve found that some people get confused when the contact is in the Global Address List).

4. Outlook Setup
Set a rule in Outlook (because you are using Exchange this will be a constantly working server side rule) to move any emails received from yourself into the Sent Items folder. (This of course works on the assumption that you don’t normally send emails to yourself.)

After you have set everything up, sending and receiving email will be transparent through the BlackBerry and are sent and received as the primary email address in Exchange.  Emails sent from the BlackBerry will be stored in the users Sent Items folder in Exchange.  Completing these steps will take a little time but it will be much less complicated than setting up a BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express on your server and having to start up and open POP3 on your Exchange server.

AstraSync™ – a Blackberry Server alternative for over the air sync.

For organizations with Exchange that that need the full over-the-air sync of calendars and contacts without the hassle of BES management, there are some alternatives.  The one we found easiest and reasonably priced at $49 per user annually is AstraSync™.  This  is a BlackBerry synchronization application used to perform two-way over-the-air synchronization of email, calendar and contact data with Exchange and other ActiveSync compatible servers including, MailSite, Axigen and Google Sync.

For more information on mobile solutions for your business, contact Megan Meisner at mmeisner@launchpadonline.com or 98130 920 0788 x210.