April 26, 2011 at 10:38What does the BES 5 SP3 prepare for us?
Some time ago, we installed and started testing BES 5.0.3 (SP3) on our corporate BlackBerry Enterprise server and want to talk a little about what new awaits users of our BES service after we install it in the production environment (we focus on early May about).
I must say that for BES administrators, the release of this service pack is a long-awaited news with which they had certain hopes. Any major server product updates - such as BlackBerry Enterpriseserver - have 2 sides. One of them is important for the user of the service, because it adds new functions, improves the functioning of the available ones, adds stability to the overall operation of the device-server bundle. The second is important for server administrators, bringing new options to management, changing (usually for the better) the operation of key services, adding new elements and features to the already extremely rich BES server console .
Based on these two constants, we would like to highlight the changes that have come with this service pack.
An extremely curious (and, as it seems, useful) function is called BlackBerry Balance . I will describe its main features. It’s not a secret for many that a BlackBerry smartphone connected to a BES servercan be blocked or completely cleared by the administrator of the BES server if necessary. This is done by the so-called remote wipe option (some also call it remote kill - for what it does with the smartphone).
So, this operation deletes all the data on the phone and simultaneously blocks it. With the new BlackBerry Balance feature, it becomes possible to segregate enterprise data (which can actually represent the main business value) from personal user data. Thus, custom customizations will not be lost as a result of remote wipe. Of course, when the smartphone is lost, it doesn’t make much sense to divide the data into types, but when a user saves a BlackBerry device after, say, leaving the company in which he used BES, this is valuable.
Another exciting new addition is the introduction of support for Microsoft's Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2 and Lync Server 2010 . For a very long time, many companies have been waiting for the start of OCS support.and even delayed the transition to BES 5 * due to the lack of this support. It's nice that support for Lync server has come much faster.
This is how the OCS / Lync client finally communicates on the BlackBerry device with the OCS / Lync server.
Support has been added for attachments encrypted with S / MIME and PGP, adding even more security to BES users .
User management in the console has become a little more convenient, sorting by columns and exporting to a csv file right from the search results in some cases helps a lot :)
BlackBerry Enterprise ServerStarted supporting Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, a great innovation for companies that prioritize Microsoft virtualization technologies .
Work BES 5 with Exchange 2010for a long time was, to put it mildly, the headache of the administrators who manage these products. Their interoperability left much to be desired even after the RIM announcement that the products are fully compatible. The biggest problems in the mutual work of the two products were fixed to BES 5 SP2, but from time to time the oldest and most annoying problem came to mind - the delay in delivering messages to BlackBerry devices. This problem had several big root causes, the last of which - the high activity of the disk subsystem of mailbox servers on Exchange due to interaction with BES - was fixed by the current service pack.
So now we can rightfully say that between Exchange 2010 and BES 5 * this state has come -
BlackBerry Enterprise Trait Tool- The Swiss knife of any self-respecting BES admin - has undergone changes and received several new features. It should be noted that this tool is not well known among the interested public, moreover, some BES admins manage to do without it. However, this tool can be considered the same as for Exchange administrators is, for example, PowerShell . Yes, in terms of flexibility, they, of course, are no match, but they are related by the fact that part of the tasks for administering BES can only be done using this tool.
The BlackBerry MDS Integration Service (MDS-IS) is retired, we do not expect any difficulties in this regard, since it was not used by anyone in the existing environment.
The BAS service, the main tool for managing the BES server in the BES 5th branch, underwent a large number of corrections and improvements . This news is extremely pleasant and valuable to us, those who directly administer the server and can appreciate the work done by RIM .
Finally, BES 5.0.3 introduces several new IT policies aimed at further improving manageability and security, including the native client management policy for access to SharePoint (!), Which is not yet available, but the appearance of this policy suggests good thoughts and it coming soon.
Be sure to notify users of the services a few days before the deployment and, hopefully, you will also like the innovations, like us!
I must say that for BES administrators, the release of this service pack is a long-awaited news with which they had certain hopes. Any major server product updates - such as BlackBerry Enterpriseserver - have 2 sides. One of them is important for the user of the service, because it adds new functions, improves the functioning of the available ones, adds stability to the overall operation of the device-server bundle. The second is important for server administrators, bringing new options to management, changing (usually for the better) the operation of key services, adding new elements and features to the already extremely rich BES server console .
Based on these two constants, we would like to highlight the changes that have come with this service pack.
An extremely curious (and, as it seems, useful) function is called BlackBerry Balance . I will describe its main features. It’s not a secret for many that a BlackBerry smartphone connected to a BES servercan be blocked or completely cleared by the administrator of the BES server if necessary. This is done by the so-called remote wipe option (some also call it remote kill - for what it does with the smartphone).
So, this operation deletes all the data on the phone and simultaneously blocks it. With the new BlackBerry Balance feature, it becomes possible to segregate enterprise data (which can actually represent the main business value) from personal user data. Thus, custom customizations will not be lost as a result of remote wipe. Of course, when the smartphone is lost, it doesn’t make much sense to divide the data into types, but when a user saves a BlackBerry device after, say, leaving the company in which he used BES, this is valuable.
Another exciting new addition is the introduction of support for Microsoft's Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2 and Lync Server 2010 . For a very long time, many companies have been waiting for the start of OCS support.and even delayed the transition to BES 5 * due to the lack of this support. It's nice that support for Lync server has come much faster.
This is how the OCS / Lync client finally communicates on the BlackBerry device with the OCS / Lync server.
Support has been added for attachments encrypted with S / MIME and PGP, adding even more security to BES users .
User management in the console has become a little more convenient, sorting by columns and exporting to a csv file right from the search results in some cases helps a lot :)
BlackBerry Enterprise ServerStarted supporting Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, a great innovation for companies that prioritize Microsoft virtualization technologies .
Work BES 5 with Exchange 2010for a long time was, to put it mildly, the headache of the administrators who manage these products. Their interoperability left much to be desired even after the RIM announcement that the products are fully compatible. The biggest problems in the mutual work of the two products were fixed to BES 5 SP2, but from time to time the oldest and most annoying problem came to mind - the delay in delivering messages to BlackBerry devices. This problem had several big root causes, the last of which - the high activity of the disk subsystem of mailbox servers on Exchange due to interaction with BES - was fixed by the current service pack.
So now we can rightfully say that between Exchange 2010 and BES 5 * this state has come -
BlackBerry Enterprise Trait Tool- The Swiss knife of any self-respecting BES admin - has undergone changes and received several new features. It should be noted that this tool is not well known among the interested public, moreover, some BES admins manage to do without it. However, this tool can be considered the same as for Exchange administrators is, for example, PowerShell . Yes, in terms of flexibility, they, of course, are no match, but they are related by the fact that part of the tasks for administering BES can only be done using this tool.
The BlackBerry MDS Integration Service (MDS-IS) is retired, we do not expect any difficulties in this regard, since it was not used by anyone in the existing environment.
The BAS service, the main tool for managing the BES server in the BES 5th branch, underwent a large number of corrections and improvements . This news is extremely pleasant and valuable to us, those who directly administer the server and can appreciate the work done by RIM .
Finally, BES 5.0.3 introduces several new IT policies aimed at further improving manageability and security, including the native client management policy for access to SharePoint (!), Which is not yet available, but the appearance of this policy suggests good thoughts and it coming soon.
Be sure to notify users of the services a few days before the deployment and, hopefully, you will also like the innovations, like us!