Blackberry, BES and Email Hosting.

it's all garbage.

Honestly, email is the biggest load of garbage I've ever had the displeasure of knowing. Yet, we rely on it, every single day, on our smartphones and computers, to communicated with colleagues and coworkers, bosses and subordinates.

There is a better way, but that's completely irrelevant, since the entire market is so ingrained in this concept of email that it's no longer worthy of any discussion. So put away your high hopes of a wave-like interface for communication. Email is horrible, and it's not going anywhere. With email being so prevelant, it's impossible to keep up. Users get bombarded with hundreds, if not thousands of new messages every day, many are never deleted, instead left to waste in the enterprise server's inbox, unopened, unread, unloved, and irrelevant.

Aside from the growing problems of users inboxes being too bloated with unread messages, you have costs on costs on costs.

What's nice is that Microsoft has made it pretty easy, buy Windows Server, buy Exchange, voila, a nice, simple, easy solution. works, add your users, give them mailboxes, and set quotas based on how many people you have, and how much disk space there is on the server. done.

Cost: 1xServer, 1xOS, 1xExchange.

If you want to add mobile access, tick a box to enable Activesync, voila, now iPhone, Android and (last but not least) Windows Phone (formerly Windows Mobile) can now obtain any and all Exchange content. What's more, they can enjoy instant delivery with push notifications. Users can access their Exchange calendar, contacts, email and more, all sync'd with the server, and to their enterprise outlook. ... Wonderful!

Cost: whatever you want to spend on a mobile phone.

Now let's add... let's say, 5 blackberry users. We want full integration of the system, so BES is the way to go. and let's say, just for kicks, that the server we previously purchased is powerful enough to run BES along side Exchange, etc. So no new hardware here, besides the phones. Well, That's great, the Blackberry users have full exchange sync and can access their stuff.

Cost: BES (not cheap, look it up) plus a licence for every blackberry device, and, obviously, the phones.

.... okayyy, what the...

so it's going to cost me how much to just get blackberries working? okay, what if we go hosted?

Well, no server cost, no cost for base exchange or BES, so that's good right?

I have to pay an amount for every email account, but that's okay, I suppose, and for every email account I have access to it from iPhone, Android and Windows Phone, as expected.... but what about blackberry, I have to pay DOUBLE for BES ACCESS? are you joking?

just to have a blackberry?

I'm sorry, but I will continue to rage hard about this, Blackberry isn't special, their system isn't significantly better than Android, or Windows Phone. this is unjust, and the market is realizing that.

I've never really been on the "RIM is dying!" train, but I think I'll have to jump, because with this, as an IT professional, I would never suggest for any organization to buy into this. avoid it at all costs. Unless a company REQUIRES blackberry for some SPECIFIC reason, that no other platform and fulfill, there is no reason to buy it, or use it.

Another post about Android

I was reading an Android Spin Article about Why Android will win the mobile wars and I got the thinking of so many things as to why or why not this could be true.

They have an excellent point in regard to devices. While there's only one iPhone (only one current model), there's around 15-20 Android devices on the market at any given time. Though iPhone is more user-oriented rather than developer-oriented, and Android vice-versa, I believe, in the end, it will be Android's developer-oriented approach that will cause developers to CREATE a more user-friendly approach.

Though there are a lot of Android devices around sporting similar technical specs (3.7-4 inch screen, 1Ghz chip, 512 or so of RAM, MicroSD expansion, Android 2.1), aka the Nexus One oriented model, there are phones out there with varying features, more than just the size of the screen, the look of the buttons, and the resolution of the camera. Some have hardware keyboards, like the Motorola Milestone (my device) or the backflip.

As we slowly prepare for the next-gen of android operating systems and associated hardware (rumors of a dual-core 1.5Ghz snapdragon chip in the mix), we're quickly approaching cellphones that are more powerful than some people's home computers. Of course the two are not directly comparible, since desktops use the CISC x86 instruction set and cellphones use a RISC, ARM archetecture (mostly).

These so-called "cellphone wars" are heating up, and the iPhone, while a powerful device, since it is only ONE device against so many, is looking at a very tough battle to stay relevant, as time goes on. Blackberry has their niche business market, and Windows Mobile... well, I'm pretty sure that most Winmo users have been looking for something *not apple* and *not blackberry* to move to for a while, and that may account for some of this Android love. I know that's what pushed me to it.