Research In Motion (RIM) has announced the BlackBerry Professional Software, its new wireless communications and collaboration solution that tightly integrates with the company's e-mail servers and is specifically designed and priced to meet the needs of small and medium-sized businesses.
BlackBerry Professional Software is based on the core functionality of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server software, but it is streamlined and tailored to meet the needs of smaller organizations with up to 30 wireless users. BlackBerry Professional Software is priced at US$499 for 5 users.
BlackBerry Professional Software enables small and medium-sized businesses to enhance communications and collaboration with an enterprise-grade mobility solution – allowing wireless access to e-mail, organiser, Internet and intranet applications with advanced security.
"Small and medium-sized organizations have many of the same business requirements for a mobility solution as compared with larger enterprises, but they often require more streamlined administration features," said Carrie MacGillivray, Senior Analyst, SMB Markets: Mobility, IDC. "It has become increasingly important for smaller companies to be able to easily and cost-effectively deploy and manage mobile technology solutions in order to remain competitive and responsive to customers. An offer that combines a mobility solution with enterprise grade middleware, and an intuitive user interface, will resonate with this increasingly mobile segment."
Key features and benefits of BlackBerry Professional Software include small IT Footprint since it installs on the same server as the e-mail system, saving customers the cost of additional hardware and operating system licenses.
The software provides integration with Microsoft Exchange or IBM Lotus Domino, allowing a full complement of synchronised wireless services including access to e-mail, calendar, contacts, notes and tasks.
A pre-install assistant utility performs a technical assessment of the environment and provides a recommended configuration making installation fast and easy with little or no requirement to determine configuration settings.
