Always welcome news for me and the Enterprise BlackBerry faithful, late last week Google updated the Google Apps Connector for BES. It's great to see that this is a product Google plans to keep up-to-date and shows that BlackBerry and BES is critical to the business user.

In addition to supporting BES 5.0 service pack 3, version 4.0 of the Google Apps connector brings some of my favorite business features. Theses new features are Free/Busy look-up and support for read receipt.

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Shortly after RIM announced the end of life for BES 4.1.6 & 4.1.7 for both Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino, Google annonced that as of July 2, 2011 Google Apps Connector for BES 3.x will no longer support these BES versionsDeprecating support for Blackberry Enterprise Server 4.1.7

Released on 3/15/2011
Starting July 2, 2011, RIM will be deprecating support for BES 4.1.6 and 4.1.7. As a result, Google Apps will stop supporting these BES versions starting July 2, 2011. Google Apps Connector for BES 3.x will still be supported for BES 5.x. We strongly urge customers to upgrade to BES version 5.x and version 3.x of the Connector.

Editions included:Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

If you're not sure what Google Apps Connector Bla1ze did a post previously.  The quick answer is that it's a much lower cost Mail, Calendar and Shared Document ecosystem for the corporate and educational world taking aim at the Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint honeypot.

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>>