Status

So you have certainly heard of Blackberry, the evil, addictive, original wireless e-mail device crafted by those cunning Canadians at Research In Motion. You may even have one yourself, but if you are small business-person, then most likely you are using it entirely apart from any Microsoft Exchange Server that your organization may have (unless, wisely, you have outsourced your Exchange Server services to a large hosting company like, say, MyHosting.com) because until recently, the Blackberry Enterprise server software necessary for integrated wireless sync directly from Exchange was prohibitively expensive and difficult to manage for small IT shops.

Someone at RIM must have noticed this, because they have recently begun offering a version of Enterprise Server, called Enterprise Server Express, for free to small organizations, with reduced license fees for users. That takes care of the prohibitively expensive part; unfortunately, no one thought to address the "difficult to manage" problem.

We had the tremendous displeasure recently of having a client who decided to take advantage of this offer and asked us to help install the server software and get their devices configured. Thus began a twelve-hour odyssey, half of which was spent on the phone with RIM support, which ultimately proved unsuccessful, and exorbitantly expensive for the client despite the software having been "free."

The installation process is complex, unnecessarily so for the small business environment (and perhaps, I suspect, even for larger businesses, although those will certainly have the internal resources to cope), and poorly understood even by RIM's support staff, who passed us back and forth with misdiagnosed issues time after time.

Ultimately, they weren't able to figure it out before our fees got to be more than the whole thing was worth to the client. They are still using the desktop sync capability; we recommended outsourcing Exchange hosting or moving to next-generation phones that will work with Exchange out of the box, like Android, iPhone, or Windows Mobile devices.

Blackberry represents a not uncommon story in information technology, a revolutionary device that breaks all previous boundaries on its release, which then rides its success right into the ground. For other examples, see Novell, VisiCalc, or AOL. You can still find these things around in pockets, with loyal adherents who will use them till death do them part, but for the most part they took the market by storm, failed to adapt, and dwindled. Not infrequently, once it becomes obvious that they have been lapped, these companies offer products which once would have commanded premium prices to customers outside the core market at a ridiculous discount. However, it's a gimmick; the value isn't in the price but the capabilities, but if the capabilities have been outmoded, then any price is excessive.

And that's the case with Blackberry Enterprise Server Express. There are newer solutions, less costly, easier to implement, with more functionality. Don't let the cachet of days past influence your decisions.