David M Williams
Sunday, 15 February 2009 05:01
IT Industry -
Market
Page 2 of 4
BES 5.0 has been in the works for some time. It has been code-named Argon, named after the element which is known for being particularly stable. RIM has already deployed it into production with ten customers.
Alan Panezic, RIM’s Vice President of Software Product Management says the feature set in BES 5.0 is going to emphasise the “R” in “Return on investment” (ROI) without increasing the “I.” That’s certainly good news in this current economy.
The first major feature you can expect is downloadable device updates from within the BES. Previously, you needed to
scour telco’s websites for their carrier-specific updates. Now you can find them through BES 5.0 itself.
What’s more, the update can be downloaded and pushed out to individual devices or groups of devices, with scheduled installation. Admins can have handhelds upgrade themselves in the early hours on a weekend, for instance.
The efficiency gains here are enormous. Currently, it’s not uncommon for devices to go un-updated for some time. Perhaps this is because the update is just not known to the admins. Or, it’s because the admins and the users just haven’t had the time to meet and perform the update.
Building on this, the next big thing, to my mind, is that most other tasks can also be scheduled in advance, not just device upgrades.
Routine matters that may have required physical assistance can now all be scheduled and performed remotely. This saves both the admin and the user having to make time to meet, and it also means admins can do less out-of-hours work.
Examples include pushing out new applications or services, or modifying existing applications. All these can be scheduled to take place at night, in the morning, on weekends – whatever – without putting anyone out.
A third important new feature is that the BES 5.0 console is now totally web-based. Admins will not need to install software on their laptop, or RDP into a server (or worry about cocking up the MAPI profile by logging in as administrator instead of the blackberry account.)
Instead, BES admins can perform BlackBerry-related tasks from any computer or device on the network with a web browser.
Please read on for more, including RIM’s answer to the iPhone’s AppStore!
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