IBM's big annual Lotus Conference, Lotusphere, is taking place right now in Orlando, Florida. Research In Motion is on site as they always are, not only as a sponsor but as great contributors to the event. This year, RIM brought some new and updated business collaboration tools with them to show off that should prove to be a big hit with enterprise folks in the form of new and updated BlackBerry apps for Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections.

This past Friday I got a run-through of these applications from Valerie Wang, who is Manager, Enterprise Product Management for RIM. While BlackBerry BIS consumers may not be familiar with IBM's Lotus software, there is a good chance those who received their BlackBerry from the company they work for and are running on a BES are. As you can imagine, there is a big overlap between IBM's and RIM's biggest customers out there in terms of organizations that have a lot of BlackBerry Smartphones installed and who are running Lotus, so RIM's focus here and IBM's distribution of the product is a natural fit.

Lotus Quickr is all about enterprise document colloboration - so right from your BlackBerry you can securely share, download, modify, upload documents and files from your device with team members. Lotus Connections is kind of like Facebook for enterprise, allowing you to access Lotus Connections profiles, bookmarks, communities, activities, blogs and more straight from your device. You can even view the chain of command so you know who reports to who and so on. The bigger the company, the more compelling this type of solution gets. What's also cool here is that these apps are running through what's called the SNAP server (Social Networking Application Proxy) which allows for CIOs and IT admins to actually see how these applications are getting used within the organization. Cool stuff.

I've BARELY scratched the surface here. For more info, you can check out the press release below, but better yet, jump on over to BlackBerry.com to view the demos. 

• View Demos And More For The Lotus Apps Via The RIM Website >>

Here is some news for you all in the enterprise space. Shortly after the announcement of RIM seeking new employees for their Fredericton, New Brunswick location. Chalk Media has announced their newly branded Chalk Pushcast Software version 5.4. The services formerly known as Mobile Chalkboard.

The pushed content application which is used to deliver rich media content such as video and audio to BlackBerry smartphones through the BlackBerry enterprise server saw new features such as a new UI, deeper integration with BES, SSL security for web access and support for OS 5 added to the mix. Further details can be found in the press release or via the Chalk website.

• Click here To View The Full Press Release From Chalk Media>>

Our friends at BoxTone hit us up with an email earlier today with some information of how things played out yesterday from both their and their customers' perspective. We've talked about BoxTone lots of times here before on CrackBerry - they focus on enterprise companies that have a LOT of BlackBerry Smartphones running and provide monitoring and managements services. An afternoon like yesterday is where their services really make an impact. Here's what they told us (all times EST):

• Between 3:00 and 4:00 PM - Problems with BBM and BIS internet browsing reported around the web (I personally experienced around 3:30 PM).
• Between 6:30 and 7:00 PM - The problem extended to BES email, preventing the delivery of BES emails to and from BlackBerry smartphones. At each of our customers, BoxTone detected a greater than normal quantity of users with messages pending, based on our learned baseline of what is normal for each server and carrier, and immediately generated a warning alert our customers before the flood of user calls (Sample email alert below). BoxTone also placed all affected BES and Carriers in a Critical state on our customers' Operations Dashboards (depicted by the red dots next to each BES and carrier). The steady growth in Pending Messages beginning around 6:45 is annotated in the attached screenshot and continued until the issue was resolved early this morning. From our monitoring data, it appears that BES were able to communicate with the RIM NOC throughout the outage; however, the NOC was unable to deliver messages.
• At approximately 12:09 AM, BoxTone detected a brief disconnect in the SRP connection of each BES to the NOC; it appears RIM reset the NOC SRP connection to complete their fixes. Following this reset, delivery of BES mail resumed.
• By 2:45 AM or earlier, BoxTone detected that most of our customers had returned to their normal (baselined) service levels, and that the backlog of pending mail had been delivered. BoxTone generated notifications informing our users that their service levels had returned to normal and updated the status of the BES and carriers to Normal.

Pretty interesting stuff. Big thanks to Mitch and the BoxTone team for sharing it with us. You can learn more about their services at BoxTone.com.

Zenprise has just announced a service enhancement to their MobileManager offerings for IT departments. The new enhancement which is called User Health check allows an IT Admin to run a full scan to diagnose and resolve the most common user support issues. A 100 point health checklist includes such items as checking for hardware and software issues with the device, user configuration errors, carrier related problems, backend server issues, or device encryption problems. All of which, when diagnosed correctly can be fixed up with very little user interaction and no wasting of time which is always important when it comes to enterprise solutions. With the influx of users who may be getting new devices for the holidays, this should come in quite handy.

• Click Here To Learn More About Zenprise MobileManager >>

[ BBCool ]

Citrix has been around for a while now and chances are you may have used their offerings without even really knowing it. Be it to access documents from the office while at home or attend an online meeting. Citrix powers a lot of the internet happening with their products and connectivity options. As they are to PC's, Citrix is making a name in the mobile market now as well. Currently, Citrix has applications out for iPhone and Windows Mobile so stepping into the BlackBerry smartphone sector was indeed, the next step. For connectivity to remote PC's, Citrix is offering this:

A little while back we covered the release of BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0 SP1 and today Research In Motion has released the maintenance release 1 package that adds fully certified support for Exchange 2010. If you are a BES admin you can now grab the download from the Research In Motion website or reach out to your Enterprise support team for further information on obtaining the MR1 package.

• Full Release Notes For The Release Are Available Here>>
• Click Here To Head On Over To The Download Site>>

At the recently-held BlackBerry Alliance Summit in Rome, Italy, I had the opportunity to listen to Gavin May, UK Business Development Director for Sage, speak about the impact and opportunities that mobilty represents for enterprises. Put it this way... it's one thing for an organization to hand their employees each a BlackBerry and say check your email when you're out of the office and it's a whole other (and much better) thing for a workforce to have access to exactly the right information at exactly the right time in exactly the right format to conduct and stay on top business from anywhere.

To help drive home the message of how enterprises can use mobility to improve efficiency and productivity within the enterprise, Sage enlisted the help of two super heroes to help build awareness of their Sage SalesLogix Mobile for BlackBerry solution. Be sure to check out the video above entitled Kick Off as Steve and Larry show up at a sales conference and spread their message. There's two more episodes below (check em out - gotta love Steve and Larry!). Definitely an innovative way to market an enterprise mobility solution. I wonder where Steve and Larry will head to next?!

• Learn More About Sage SalesLogix for BlackBerry >>

Research In Motion has made generally available BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0 Service Pack 1. Most corporate environments running BES 5.0 have most likely already got Service Pack 1 installed already for their users. But just in case you were holding off, you can now head to the Research In Motion download site and grab your copy for IBM Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange. As always, Research In Motion has updated their knowledge base articles to reflect all the new changes and features as well.

• Check Out The Full Change Log Via The RIM Knowledgebase Today>>

Contest: Leave your best IT disaster story and how Mobile Admin would have helped and win 1 of 5 free Mobile Admin Basics licenses!

It was back in April of 2008 that Rove Mobile introduced their popular Mobile Admin 4.0 software for IT administrators. Fast forward to today and Rove has improved upon their solution with the release of Mobile Admin 5.0 Professional and a new product, Mobile Admin Basics, which trims down on some of the features (but cuts down on the price) found in the pro version, but should get it into the hands of more IT administrators at a great price point. The pro version has also undergone a price reduction. For more information you can read the press release below and jump over to roveit.com/products to compare the two offerings.

Contest: We often do contests around here for the BlackBerry end consumers, so it seems about time we do one for the admins! Rove Mobile wants to hear your IT horror story. Let us know in the comments how having Mobile Admin could have helped you and you coul win a free copy! Contest ends Sunday at midnight.  

Yikes... it's been a while since we've done an "enterprise" post around here. We got word from BoxTone back on Monday actually that they have released BoxTone 5.0. The release includes some major upgrades as the service just keeps getting better and better. BoxTone provides support for various devices and complete end-to-end secure service for IT teams. If you're in a company that runs a lot of BlackBerry devices, read on for the Boxtone 5.0 updates that include:

Back at WES we got a look at the Google Connector for BES and along with the enhanced gmail plugin, Google Connector has been released after missing their initial launch target date of July. The application which comes free to Google Apps Premier and Education users, allows for integration with BlackBerry Enterprise Servers without any need for an Exchange server. Seems as though the reason Google missed their launch date was due to new features being added, here is a break down:

• Messages sent to your Gmail inbox are pushed to your BlackBerry within 60 seconds.
• Emails read/deleted on your BlackBerry are marked as read/deleted in Gmail, and vice-versa.
• Emails archived/starred on your BlackBerry are archived/starred in Gmail, and vice-versa.
• BlackBerry folders are synchronized with labels in Gmail.
• You can search for contact information of coworkers from the global address list on your BlackBerry.
• Contacts in Gmail are automatically synchronized with your BlackBerry address book.
• You can view your Google Calendar schedule with the native
  BlackBerry application, with one-way synchronization from Google
  Calendar to your BlackBerry device. Two-way calendar sync with the
  ability to accept, decline and schedule meetings from your BlackBerry
  device is not available with this release but we are working on it.
• Administrators can use the management and security tools that are part of BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

Google has set up some great information on their blog to further assist those interested, be sure to check it out. This may be great for some, but the lack of two way synch is still an issue within this application as it is with the enhanced gmail plugin, so if you have an exchange server now ya might wanna make sure the switch is the right choice should you be looking towards google connecter.

• For More Information And Downloads Head Over The Google Mobile Page>>

RIM has always been a leader in the IT security field, with the usage of BlackBerry Enterprise Server spread across so many organizations now it would make your head spin. In these times when demand for higher levels of security is important, RIM has just announced their forth coming updated version of the BlackBerry Smart Card reader. More details below.

*UPDATE* Domino release notes are available and BES 5.0 SP1 release notes are available for Domino and MS Exchange as well*

It just seems not too long ago at WES that RIM was announcing the availability of BES 5.0, which brings some significant changes to the BES infrastructure as BES Admins know it. Now, word comes from port3101's hdawg that BES 5.0 MR2 is soon to be launched. RIM has taken the time to outline some of the changes within MR2 through their downloadable PDF documentation but the major details, as it stands -- still remain unavailable. Be sure to check out what's within the PDF file as it addresses some concerns BES Admins may have had with the original launch and I'm sure RIM has much more in store for this release as it draws closer.

• Download The Available PDF File Documentation To Get A Closer Look >> 

Calling all BES Admins...

Win a Free License of BoxTone Essentials 500 - Enter Here! >>

BoxTone has been hard at working creating some great user tools for all you BES Admins out there and have just unveiled, their latest product, BoxTone Essentials. BoxTone Essentials is everything you need for a full on monitoring system for your BES environment, targeted towards smaller oragnizations with modest budgets but still need to have the safety and security that is offered to larger organizations.

BoxTone Essentials -- part of the BoxTone mobile user management platform -- automates core monitoring and management activities, proactively alerting you to mobile service issues then helping you to find, fix and validate them in less than 3 minutes. Features include:

• End-to-End Visibility - via a Dashboard that displays in real time the health of individual and groups of mobile users, BlackBerry Enterprise Servers, Exchange and Domino mail servers and wireless carriers, and, when needed, a drill-down for more detail and to take action.
• Proactive Alerts - via SmartAlerting that warns you of pending issues and risks – such as high rescan rates, hung threads, carrier outages, SRP outages or VIP low memory -- so you can fix them before users call
• The Right Answer - via a User Console that in plain language enables you to pinpoint and resolve an issue immediately with simple instructions (no hunting through logs or searching online forums)
• Click to Fix - via 1-Click Fix-It for the most common service issues – such as reset password, send service books, wipe device -- right from the User Console without the need to jump to other tools.
  

With the information on how BoxTone Essentials (view Press Release) can help you now out of the way, let's move onto the contest! CrackBerry and BoxTone have teamed up and are offering you (and your organization) the chance to win $10,000 worth of BoxTone software courtesy of BoxTone. Read on for full contest rules.

As we mentioned yesterday, WES 2009 kicks off early next month and one of the big things we know will take life there is the long-awaited release of BES 5.0. In case any of you enterprise folk were thinking it could get delayed further, be at ease. Yesterday some of the BES 5.0 marketing materials leaked out (click the image above to see them all in detail - it's kind of funny how many of the ads feature the Storm considering in the enterprise space I barely know anyone who uses that device) and RIM also shot out a ton of BES 5.0 info in the I.T. edition of the BlackBerry Connection newsletter. You can also sign up at BlackBerry.com to be notified of BES 5.0's release. All positive signs that it will be here soon!

Related Articles:

• BES 5.0 - What is it? And Walk through >>
• BES 5.0 and OS 5.0 in Action >>
• OS 5.0 In Action >> 
• BlackBerry 101: BES & BIS - What's the Difference? >>