As you’ve probably already heard or read via my Twitter stream there are a number of BlackBerry giveaways I’ll be handing out while at ILUG this year. To make things interesting I thought it would be nice to space out the giveaways over 3 days and to select the winners based on their social media activity or rather, their participation in specific BlackBerry-related social media activities.
Blackberry have planted themselves firmly with Adobe Air. Lots of shots taken at iPad thoughout this demo.
As many people know, I am a big fan of BES and the devices in the enterprise. I am also a fan of Traveler. But these are two very different beasts.
Traveler is free, and you get what you pay for. It is a fully functional mail / PIM tool for multiple devices. It does this very well. For free. It uses it’s own client and SyncML or Activesync when needed, depending on the device.
Blackberry Enterprise server is also this and a whole lot more. Much more customisable, much more malleable, much more secure, much more functional in the application space, a web proxy and a total extension of your corporate world. It routes all messages through military secure NOC’s globally with many certifications for encryption. It is not as consumer focused as the typical Traveler devices. Because Blackberry came from the enterprise world.
Many companies only see the word “free” and going down the path of Traveler. Some are abandoning their BES architcture and license costs for Traveler. This is fine as long as it suits your business. On a number (more then 4, less then 10) of times I have been asked the following types of questions by operations teams that now support Traveler.
Q: “Can I control all the devices fully with Traveler”
A: Not really
Q: “I have been told to implement clustering for it. Does it support it?”
A: Not really. Or at all, depending on how you look at it.
Q: “I want to push out secure applications to the devices”
A: I hate to disappoint.. but.
Q: “I have been asked to disable xx applications on the devices now. Can I do this in Traveler?”
A: “In some cases yes, but in many no”
Q: “I want to use Traveler to control all data on the devices, and disable some of its features. Can I do this in Traveler?”
A: “It depends, but simple answer is you don’t have full control anymore”
Why? Because you get what you pay for. If you want the hammer to hit the nail, go with Traveler. But don’t give your operations team grief when you want to use the hammer to build a fort. It doesn’t work that way. Buy a BES.
I have come accross a potential issue with BES 5.x running across multiple domino domains. First of all, this applies to very few customers as the majority of customers have BES servers running as part of their domino domain. By this I mean the Domino engine running your BES server is just another server in your domain. But in some cases, the BES servers running on Domino are in their own little domain, reading/sending to other domains using directory assistance for lookups.
In this particular case, the multi-domain setup was where I found an issue. A very special Shout-out to Gab Davis for helping me prove to myself I am not insane, and Jennifer Stevenson from RIM for being super-helpful (as ever).
In a single domain setup, messages are sent to devices by the bes server. If you get an email, BES will scan your mail server/file, see it and relay it to your device via NOC. If you send an email, it is chucked onto the BES server and the BES server routes as needed via domino routing.
Imagine you have a Domino/BES server (or clustered HA servers) in its own domain. It is servicing other domains which include clustered mail servers. In the case of receiving an email, it works the same as a single domain setup (i.e. BES scans multiple servers and you get the message delivered to your device). However, if you send an email the BES does not do the routing. No… it deposits the message on the mail.box of your home server and lets your server do the routing. A bit odd, but ok. Here is an excerpt from the BES installation guide:
If the user is in the same IBM® Lotus® Domino® domain as the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, the BlackBerry Messaging Agent stores the message in the mail.box that is located on the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. If the user is in an IBM Lotus Domino domain separate from the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, the BlackBerry Messaging Agent stores the message in the mail.box that is located on the user’s messaging server.
Now consider an outage. Your mail server is clustered and your home server goes down. You can still get messages to your device as BES is smart enough to read the cluster server, but if you send from your device the message is not deposited on your home mail server, as the BES cannot open the down server. You can’t send mail from your device and it fails at the BES level.
This was discussed with RIM today, and the technotes seem to back it up. I am able to recreate this problem (albeit unreliable) More to follow as we figure out the direct issue. Workaround is to add your BES’s to your Domino domain.
A few days ago, I posted this. Last night, I received another but noticed it looked like this on my blackberry.
It seems the blackberry mail client interprets the mail as a legitimate message. This message is harmless on a blackberry, but it could be exploitable quite easily.
A week ago, while working with a customer, this error was appearing on a recently upgraded Domino/BES 502 server.
28/07/2010 05:43:47 Wrong DST switch mode=2. Currently only
mode 0 and 1 are supported
28/07/2010 05:43:47 Wrong DST switch mode=2. Currently only
mode 0 and 1 are supported
28/07/2010 05:43:47 Unable to construct Notes string for TZ
id=#####
Blackberry (as usual) fast-tracked the error and published a knowledge base document that day.
In BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0 SP2, additional logging captures the status of unsupported time zones. In this instance, DST Switch mode 2 applies to Iran and Iraq time zones that are present on the BlackBerry smartphone, but have not yet been designed for Windows Server®, Lotus Domino Server, or the BlackBerry Enterprise Server.
The error is intended to be informational and does not indicate that there are any issues on the BlackBerry Enterprise Server.
Link here
With all the devices available to people these days, it is very difficult to know which is best. Over beers and discussions about these devices, the criteria you use to choose them is totally subjective on the user’s habits. A quick count of old and new devices I have available (not including computers) and I have about 16 to hand. Some of which are totally ancient, others include flavours of blackberries, iPhones, iPods, iPads, Nokias, Erricsons, Motorollas, HTC’s, Palm etc etc (I *really* could go on).
My favorite argument on choosing the device I would depend on most is “if you had to pick one to use solely, what would it be?”.
For me, Blackberry Bold. No doubt. It is a hammer to hit a nail, great phone, great collaboration tool, great battery life, dependable, strong, good maps tool (ask me about being lost in the centre of Barbados… blackberry maps to the rescue). For web browsing it is “ok” and it works as a media player if you need it to. The proof is in the fact it is the primary device I use every day, even with all other devices available. I never check to see if I packed my blackberry, as it is in my pocket before I go anywhere. Customer sites I know that have had senior staff ditch their blackberry for an iPhone note that many revert to the blackberry (or worse, use both) after a few months.
But, as we say, everyone is different. Which device would you choose if you had to?
Many years ago a customer of mine had a requirement to browse internal file servers via their blackberry device. At the time we went with galty explorer. Over a long time it seemed to serve them well. Now, that product is gone and I am looking at alternatives. Does anyone know a similar product they recommend?
