• For more information on RIM BBCS, go here.
• RIM BlackBerry Beta Zone for more information and to sign up for the RIM BBCS open beta program

Hi There,

i am very happy with the beta of the cloud service. One problem it says you need to be enterprise user!

We are a small company with three accounts and don't have the need to be a enterprise user.  Why is the service not available to all users!

Also I registered with Blackberry, but when I go to my Resources menu in setting up email on mobile phones there is no possibility to enable the Blackberry Business cloud service. Is this because we are not Enterprise user?

Hope to hear from you soon,

Gerrit

I agree with Gerrit. The requirement for Enterprise account was not specified anywhere until the beta was launched! On top of that, I read that it's not an easy upgrade from P to Enterprise user. There's a bunch of PST migrations.

On top of that, only 2 directors in our 10 user company are on blackberrys. Considering we just made a migration from Google to Office365, I am hesitant to put our users through another migration.

This is really disappointing as migrating to Office 365 was because of Activesync. We were even willing to pay for it whereas Google was free.

Chiou

Thanks for the feedback, Gerrit.

While the RIM BBCS Open Beta requires an Office 365 (or Exchange Online) enterprise plan, RIM and Microsoft continues to evaluate support for other offers. At this time, however, we do not have anything to share regarding timing or the specific plans.

It is worth noting you can still try the beta of BBCS using an Office 365 trial at no cost for 30 days.

Thanks,

Ian

All,

I have on a relatively good authority (source - a RIM employee) that BlackBerry Business Cloud Services will be coming to the Professional plans in the future. However, no set timescales have been announced.

I'd be quite suprised if MS/RIM did not allow Professional plans to be used at some point in the future... I think we have to wait, which us IT people aren't very good at doing... I'm certainly shelving the purchase of 2 BlackBerry 9900s until this is sorted out.

Dave

I went google gmail.. but now even google is going to pull the plug on the gmail BB connector at the end of this month.  

RIM is bleeding, seems they would want their solutions on all office365 plans.  Heck, they should have had the beta months ago (but that is another story).  

I'd be much happier if MS would release a wp 7 device in the style of a BB... much like the Moto XPRT (android device).  Love my front keyboards.  

Actually, one company I work with is doing away with their BBs and making users bring their own devices.

the Google GMAIL "app" is old and useless. The BIS integration with gmail that RIM has been perfecting over the last few years is far better to the app that google use to publish. It allows native calendar and contacts synchronization, and native push notifications for send/received email.

I have many friends who use gmail for email. None of them that I know of use the old gmail app.

Its a non-issue. Just people twisting the words around to perpetuate more negative press.

RIM would be stupid to not release the BBCS to the P plans.

Heston,

You don't use the app nor have a BB but you claim to say it is useless... then move on to say a non-issue.  I'm not sure if it is or not.. like you, I don't use a BB with gmail... I use a Windows Phone 7.  ;-)  I'm simply stating what I read... not to perpetuate anything.  

If the app is useless, I wonder why google would make such a big deal out of it?  While searching online, the only solution I found to sync gmail with contacts, email and calendar was the gmail app.  Well, unless you upgrade on the cell (sprint) side.  

You could be right, but I'm not sure.  Either way, BB is not doing well... look at their numbers provides a lot of negative press.

I think RIM is stupid for not releasing BBCS to P plans out the gate.    But then there are several small issues that MS should fix in Office365... so a release of BBCS leaving out P plans would not surprise me.  

Tyur,

I should should have revised my posting. I do use a Blackberry, and I was referring to friends who use a blackberry and gmail above.

I have 2 gmail accounts and 1 BES account on my phone.

For BB OS5/6/7, the BIS integration will allow you to synchronize your contacts and calendar to gmail natively. It also allows you to star, label, remote search...mark as read/not read...etc.

What you were referring to is the 'Google Sync" application for syncing calendars and contacts.

Its not like GMAIL is going disallowing a blackberry to check email on their servers anymore.

Feel free to take a look a the post on crackberry for more information and clarification about the issue.

crackberry.com/google-deprecating-native-gmail-app-blackberry-november-22

I still don't believe Google made a big deal out of dropping the app support. It is simply the media and negative press that RIM is getting which is making it a bigger issue. However...whether the reason google decided to drop the app is due to low numbers (which is likely the case as most people use BIS gmail checking), or because no one is checking gmail on a blackberry anymore........this is still bad for RIM's PR.

Lastly, If RIM doesn't release BBCS to the P plans, it would send a message that they are not interested in trying to accomodate for small business customers. I think it would show that they are only interested in large enterprise customers. This would be unfortunate as I can name a number of small businesses that do want a cheap BES solution and would be interested in the P plans. If RIM ignores them, they're likely to jump to android or iPhone in the future.

Thanks for the post.  

Yes, I think there is major confusion on what can and can't be done with google gmail on a BB.  Not like google is going all out to explain it either.  

I think the further confusion comes from the past as well.  In the past you could not sync calendar and contacts with a BIS account on Sprint.  You had to purchase the BES account to allow contact and calendar sync.  From your email/experience, this is no longer the case.  I personally thought that is why we needed the gmail app in order to get around the limitations of BIS calendar and contact sync.  

Confusing things like this does not help RIM.  RIM needs to ensure they are more clear on connection issues.  Seems to me like they are still living in the "we are the kings and you have no choice but to go through us for email" complex.  Those days are over.  

RIM reminds me so much of Palm... poor management decisions, over a long period of time, drove that company into the ground.  

Why does my name keep changing... I'm tyr as well.  :-)

Fas as BBCS... if they don't go small business, I think the future will also include Windows Phone 7, as well as Android and iPhone.  Can't rule out the power of connecting to SharePoint and other items on WP7... not to mention the items focused toward business users (security, etc) - even if not in place, MS will quickly get there.

Good times... 

FYI all,

RIM just posted this on their blog a few days ago.

Hopefully this clears the air about checking Gmail on your blackberry.

http://helpblog.blackberry.com/2011/11/gmail-on-blackberry/

Kan,

Thanks....

So you can sync cal, email, and cont with BB on google.  It is a built-in app.  

Maybe they should do the same for office 365, instead of special servers.  Seems like it would be cheaper and faster.... but I won't pretend to know if it would be, but it seems like it would.  

Again, thank you for taking time to post the link.  I really appreciate it.  

Have a good weekend.

I'm fairly pleased with the Beta so far, only had some issues with converting users from internal BES to Cloud BES.  Is there an official date yet when it stops being beta and is fully supported?  I am planning on rolling it out to more of my users, so want to be sure it is still going to be around.

Thanks...

RIM is working towards a general availability date in January 2012.  You can visit the BlackBerry Beta Zone  at www.blackberry.com/.../businesscloud for more details.

Chiou Chan,

Above, you mentioned that your company just migrated from Google Apps to Office365. I am just evaluating Office365 P1 and having lots of issues with email setup. Do you mind asking, why did you migrate from Google to Office? Because of difficulties and lack of support, I am considering abandoning Office365 and go with Google.

Any insight appreciated.

Thanks!

Roman

PS: Please reply via PM if you do not want to do it via forum.