Why BlackBerry is good and why are bosses choosing it?

In the West, BlackBerry is almost considered the No. 1 smartphone for business, but it is almost unknown in our country.

The reason is that BlackBerry is not only a “dialer”, but a whole combination of services and hardware for secure real-time synchronization of personal or corporate data .

BlackBerry has a high level of security “out of the box” and the corresponding global infrastructure, integrated with the network of the mobile operator.

Details under the cut.

History tour

Hardware and software are made by Research in Motion, a large telecommunications company from Canada. It was founded in 1984 by Mike Lazaridis. First, Mike experimented for several years with different directions, and then concentrated only on mobile data technology. In 1999, the first BlackBerry appeared, which at first was just a beautiful pager, and then became a modern business smartphone.

The history of BlackBerry in Russia begins in 2005, when the first ideas about launching the service were announced. However, they could not be implemented due to a lack of coordination on the part of law enforcement agencies. Only in 2008, Beeline launched a service that met the requirements of regulatory authorities and the wishes of customers. Now work is underway to expand the functionality available in the Russian Federation.

Services

There are currently two main types of services: BIS (personal) and BES (corporate use only).

BlackBerry Internet Service - BIS - a solution aimed primarily at individuals. This is realtime-push synchronization, traffic compression and privacy. For simplicity, some corporate users also liked it. It will work perfectly with any corporate mail server, on which it is possible to work with external clients using standard mail protocols. In the case of Exchange, BIS can be integrated through the OWA interface. When connecting Google and Yahoo mailboxes, additional functionality for synchronizing the address book and calendar appears.

Beeline provides two types of BIS services: regular, where only unlimited mail traffic is included, and all-inclusive (more expensive), where BIS-browsing is also included.

Blackberry enterprise server- BES - designed for a centralized secure connection between the corporate mail server, the wireless network of the service provider and Blackberry smartphones. It should be noted that BlackBerry was primarily created and developed to work with a corporate user, and in the process of its evolution, it was optimized specifically for the needs of the business. BES provides secure and easy access to corporate information and applications. It also contains a set of tools that provide IT department employees with the ability to centrally and conveniently manage their Blackberry solution. Integrates with MS Exchange and IBM Lotus Domino mail servers.

BES is:

• Wireless email synchronization,
• Wireless organizer synchronization (contacts, calendar, tasks, etc.),
• Search your corporate address book
• Access to corporate data (Intranet, File Sharing),
• Advanced security settings,
• The ability to wirelessly apply IT policies to smartphones,
• Organization of remote access from smartphones to various corporate applications (CRM, SFA, ERP and others),
• Ease of installation and administration (server deployment is done by a partner company, usually it takes about 3 hours).

BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express- BESx - has all the important advantages and the basic functionality of BES, however, it is easier to install and less demanding on system resources (up to the fact that it can be installed directly on the mail server). Being, in fact, a “lite” version of BES, it does not have some services integrated into BES (for example, Collaboration service, through which it is possible to expand the functionality of the corporate instant messaging service on users' smartphones), it contains fewer available IT policies. However, its undeniable advantage is the lack of the need to purchase user licenses, in contrast to the full version of BES. By the way, in my opinion, BESx is the best choice for 90% of corporate clients. Despite the fact that it is positioned as a product for the SME segment,

BES and BESx is the name of the server software. Service implies the presence of a server part on the client’s site: both versions of BES are supplied by us in the form of a hardware-software complex. To reduce capital costs, three types of complexes were created that differ in the content of the hardware component. The first is a turnkey solution that includes a physical server that meets a specific specification, special hardware and software, an operating system, and BES software. The second is a solution for customers who have free server capacities; only BES software and special software and hardware are supplied to such customers. The third is designed for customers whose IT infrastructure uses virtualization (Hyper-V or VMware).

Depending on the type of BES and the selected complex, the cost of delivery of the service varies. So, 1 + BES - the most expensive, 3 + BESx - the most economical.

Hosted Blackberry Enterprise Service - Hosted BES is a solution for customers who do not want to install and administer a BES server within the corporate infrastructure. The server is located remotely, at the Beeline site, and is administered by our IT specialists. This option has a number of specific advantages:

• Full access to the functionality of the Blackberry corporate solution, as if it were physically implemented in the company,
• Outsourcing (no need to set up an IT administrator),
• Minimum cost and implementation time,
• Direct integration of the hosting solution with the existing infrastructure of the company.

The set of BlackBerry services can be reflected in the following scheme (with a possible separation by business scale):



Here, in the table , various solutions can be compared.

How it works

BlackBerry is a complete service solution. Without the availability of a special communication service from the mobile operator, the smartphone simply will not be able to work normally, since it will not be able to interact with the global BB infrastructure. The presence of this service makes it possible for the device to participate in the provisioning process. This is the process of determining Blackberry device permissions to access certain services. During provisioning, activation, modification, management, and blocking can be performed.

This can be expressed in tasks such as activating a specific BlackBerry device, assigning a specific set of parameters for subsequent standard activations, updating information in a RIM billing system.

The diagram below shows the BlackBerry Provisioning System nodes and the interactions between them. The key node is the BlackBerry Infrastructure (BBI), which interacts with devices directly and through other nodes in the system.



One of the main goals of provisioning is to ensure the normal operation of the smartphone. Roughly speaking, immediately out of the box, all BB devices are the same. They are endowed with a certain set of functions only after successful registration in the network, interaction with the provisioning system and obtaining the necessary set of service books.

Service book - a configuration file that is sent to the device and contains information on a specific service or function. For example, the service book “BlackBerry Internet Browsing Service [BrowserConfig]” contains information about the Internet Browser application, including settings for the access point, home page, and default bookmarks.

The provisioning process always occurs when: the device is registered for the first time on a wireless network, a new SIM card is installed in the device, the “register now” option is selected in the device settings (parameter settings - advanced parameters - the node routing table), the device firmware is updated, rolled back or reinstalled .

Let's analyze an example of a new connection. A user bought a device and a SIM card on which this or that BlackBerry service was connected. By connecting a service on a SIM card, the device is able to build a packet connection through the blackberry.net access point (for almost all BB smartphones, it is the default access point). All traffic from this access point is routed by the operator towards BBI. In parallel with this, a command is sent to the provider system from the billing system of the telecom operator, with information about which particular communication service was connected to the user and what set of BB functions should correspond to it. Meanwhile, the smartphone has already built an active connection through blackberry.net and sends a request to BBI about which set of services is available to it.

The device reports a successful connection to the BBI by a special indication of the registration icon in the mobile operator’s network (capital letters EDGE / GPRS or “berry” icon about 3G).

Infrastructure

Now consider the scenario for sending an e-mail message from user A of company A to user B of company B. According to this scenario, email is synchronized when purchasing a BES (BESx) solution. Other solutions work similarly.



So, user A creates a letter on the device. Before sending a message to the network, the device encrypts and compresses the message. The mobile operator routs this message in the direction of BBI, and there, in turn, the membership of this particular device is determined to a specific BES server. The BES server of company A picks up the mail message, decrypts and decompresses it, and sends it on behalf of user A through the privileged user in the mail system (with the rights to send as). Next, the mail server A sends a letter to user B of company B. The BES server of company B (through a privileged user in the mail system, endowed with access rights to user B's mailbox) takes this message from the mailbox, encrypts and compresses it, and sends it to the BBI side.

Russian realities

Separately, I would like to discuss the most burning issue of implementing this functionality in Russia. RIM has built up a well-deserved reputation for a highly secure solution around it over the years of life and development of its product. Repeatedly, the company had to take part in a showdown around this decision at the level of state security services. However, the company never gave rise to its customers to doubt the security of BlackBerry services. But in Russia, this reputation played a trick on RIM.

Attention, paranoid!It's no secret that we are all “under the hood” and tireless control, in some country more, in some less. But this control does not go beyond the laws - there are many regulatory acts, the requirements of which we, as a communications operator, must comply with. For this reason, the product, which is delivered in one form all over the world, is delivered with an additional solution in Russia, which provides the possibility of control by the state security service. For this reason, we are forced to additionally supply special software and hardware to each server. For this reason, the BESx server, distributed worldwide for free, is sold here. For the same reason, we cannot connect the service to our SIM cards if the devices are planned to be connected to a BES located abroad.

With all this, it also remains a mystery to me why many people express concern that the state security organs can read his mail, but at the same time a much smaller number of people worry that the same "people in uniform" can listen to their telephone conversations. Firstly, nobody constantly reads or listens to anything, but only has a set of technical means to do this in the event of, for example, a terrorist threat. Secondly, these same technical means are used only in accordance with the law, that is, it implies the existence of special grounds and permits (for example, a court decision). Thirdly, the system provides a very high level of protection against competitive intelligence, which, in theory,

Anticipating the majority of readers' questions, I want to say that before launching the service in Russia, we had two options: to do as much as possible, and to constantly improve the solution or to do nothing at all. In the second case, our users would never have been able to take advantage of the solutions that have firmly won their place under the sun all over the world.

Total

BlackBerry is better than a spherical phone in a vacuum in that it has “normally out of the box” normally configured protection, plus it, again, is “out of the box” ready to work with corporate services. As for security, it provides one of the best levels of confidentiality in the field of turnkey solutions.