Smartphones have become an indispensible part of our lives. Who among us checks their PDA before they go to bed and as soon as they wake up? I know I do.
Probably the most recognizable smartphone is the Blackberry, and I am among thousands who rely on one every day. I have had a Blackberry in one form or another for the past nine years. I was first assigned one while working in a large corporate environment. My company had the full version of Blackberry Enterprise Server and all the bells and whistles that came with it. It wasn’t until I left the Fortune 500 ivory tower that I became painfully aware of how limited Blackberry Professional, Research in Motion’s (RIM’s) small business product, truly was. The ability to search my Exchange mailbox via my handheld—gone. My pretty HTML e-mails with all of their lovely pictures and fonts—gone. My ability to search my colleagues’ schedules to set a meeting time from my Blackberry—gone. In essence: many of the features that I came to rely upon to work remotely on a day-to-day basis were all suddenly gone. I was devastated at first. But as with many things, I learned to adapt.
Although their marketshare has eroded over the past few years due to fierce competition from Google, Apple, and a few others, RIM remains the leader in the world of smartphones. According to a recent article published in the Dallas Business Journal, RIM remains number 1 with a 36% marketshare. RIM’s closest rival, Google, holds 28% of the market with their line of Droid phones.
The high cost of connectivity
While RIM is known worldwide for making a great product, they are also well known for a less favorable reason. To use a Blackberry in a business setting, organizations have to contend with a relatively high cost of ownership. First, let’s take the data plan. Most mobile carriers charge $30–40 per month for Internet access. In order to connect a Blackberry to an existing corporate Blackberry Enterprise Server or Blackberry Professional Server (owned by your company), the standard data plan is not sufficient. You must pay the mobile carrier an additional $15 per month for the “Blackberry Enterprise Data plan.”
Next, let’s look at the costs of the server licenses. For businesses that wish to equip their workforce with Blackberry PDAs, there are some costs on the back-end. You must set up a Blackberry server (Enterprise or Professional) to integrate with your Microsoft Exchange and/or Lotus Domino Servers. For small- to medium-sized businesses, RIM grants a single Blackberry Professional user license free of charge. Each additional user license sells for $100. So, if you have a staff of 10, the start-up costs for your Blackberry environment would be $900.
You mean they’re giving it away—free?
A few months ago, without much notice and even less fanfare, RIM did something outrageous. They announced that beginning in 2010, they would provide their new Blackberry Enterprise Server Express product for free. The idea is to steer smaller businesses away from other smartphones such as the Droid or iPhone and to get them back on the proverbial Crackberry.
So what does Blackberry Enterprise Server Express do?
This product is designed for small- to medium-sized businesses, and therefore could be a good fit for many associations. Each Blackberry Enterprise Server Express installation will provide up to 75 Blackberry devices access to corporate e-mail, scheduling, and select applications on your organization’s network. Also, it allows you to send and receive messages with embedded HTML messages, search your Exchange mailbox, and examine your colleagues’ calendars directly from your handheld. For IT administrators, Express allows control of the devices through various policy settings. One example is if a Blackberry is lost or stolen, you can erase the handheld and turn it off remotely, rendering the device useless.
Another advantage is that Express users no longer need to pay that additional $15/month for the Enterprise data plan. Instead, all you need is the standard data plan running $30–40 per phone—a savings of $180 per Blackberry, per year, compared to the Professional plan.
Here is where I insert a disclaimer and state that my opinions about Blackberry do not necessarily reflect those of DelCor, its management, or affiliates. As an IT professional with more than 12 years of experience in the biz, I can say that if you run a business (large or small), uniformity and standardization are the key to controlling IT costs. When you standardize on a product or service, your costs will shrink over time. More often than not, uniformity and standardization do require some investment upfront. It is not often that a tool comes along that helps you optimize your business the way that Express would, which also happens to be free.
The bottom line—evaluating whether Express is right for you
If you have already invested in Professional, I encourage you to look at Express. You can leverage your existing investment while gaining more functionality and reduce costs at the same time. If you are an organization that doesn’t have a firm policy in place as it relates to smartphones, consider Express. The cost of supporting and maintaining the same type of PDAs will save you over time.
Blackberry Enterprise Server Express makes a number of features once reserved for the large business available to small- to medium-sized organizations. It enables businesses of any size to quickly and easily get started with a BlackBerry solution. It provides advanced BlackBerry smartphone features with no additional software or user license fees, and works with any Internet-enabled BlackBerry data plan or a BlackBerry enterprise data plan.
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We often give talks at conferences or workshops, come see us and learn a bit more about technology in the nonprofit and association marketplace. Here is where we're speaking next:
- Upcoming AV & Technology Innovations In The Meeting Industry
Thursday, February 16, 2012 - The Seven Dwarfs Of Social Media: Enchanting Your Audience
Sunday, February 26, 2012 to Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - How Technology Has Made Us All Artists
Wednesday, March 28, 2012 - IGNITE: Is Botox Better Than An MBA?
Friday, March 30, 2012 - View all events...
- Who needs talk radio? Eavesdrop on Craig Sorell, a project coordinator at the American Industrial Hygiene Association, and KiKi L'Italien, DelCor's senior consultant in social media and member communities, as they chat about trends in the association industry. They get together for the Association Cocktail Hour biweekly, but you can listen any time!
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