SoftCom Corporate Blog

We get a lot of questions about our Blackberry service. The most common one we see is usually phrased something like this:

“Why do I need your Blackberry service if I already got one from my provider? - I even got an email address that works on my Blackberry”

What most people get from their provider is the actual Blackberry device, a data plan so they can surf the web and 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.

But the BES or Blackberry Enterprise Server does much more. 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.

As far as I know Lotus Notes doesn’t have a ‘hosted’ model. Microsoft Exchange does and the feature set is way to large to expand upon in this post. But not only can you use any email address you like with Hosted Exchange, 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.  

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’.

John Carthy
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.
V.P. of Sales and Marketing