My First Crackberry (tm)

[svandamme]

Originally Posted by flipper35

The Blackberrry requires Blackberry Enterprise Server in order to sync with Exchange. There is no native Exchange support. This does allow the information to be encrypted when transmitted so if you are worried about someone listening in that way it would be difficult to read that information. On the onther hand, once received on the phone it is open for anyone to read if they are able to unlock (or someone forgot to lock) the phone.

Don't forget Domino and Groupwise support which hardly any other platform offers.

and once it has been received on the phone it's not open to anyone to read if the Admin has locked it down properly, eg, encryption on the device memory and on the SD card with mandatory password and device lock timeout..

As far as security goes, none of the others has the security capabilities on the phone like the BB has out of the box. They aren't even in the same league.

You can lock those things so hard , they become useless to even the actual user..
And so far there has only been one vulnerability, via the sdcard encryption (which anybody worth his salt when it comes to actual security would not have allowed anyway).

For corporate purposes it's still the best thing out there.
The only major negative aspect is the relyance on RIM for the SRP connectivity.. That's the Achilles heel of the entire BES> It's also what makes money for RIM and the network operators..

[coldstart]

I don't understand why Apple or Android doesn't offer a phone with a real physical keyboard. They both sell very similar phones. A physical keyboard is the best for business applications and easy typing.

I think that RIM/Blackberry will sell a ton of phones once they get their 6 new phones out later this year or in early 2013. I would buy one and I'm sure that 78 million Blackberry users are dying to upgrade to the latest BB10 phones.

I think that they will recover with the business crowd (big money) but will never get back to where they were 5 years ago.

[svandamme]

Rim is in trouble , even with the new phones coming up

They brought out Mobile fusion Universal device server to support other phones on Android and IOS and it's a dog

And Blackberry Device Server to replace BES.
And compared to BES it's also a low spec POS backend.

At this time there's no information available that says the new phones will even be backwards compatible with BES.

So Admin's are all happy with BES, it does the job, well, stable.. easy to manage, easy to administer devices, very high specced with policies and features.

And the replacement is a POS that can't even do half of BES. and rim does a pisspoor job at communicating.

Even worse. There is NO upgrade path. It's a totally new platform.


Essentially RIM gave up the customer base by telling them "you gotta do something entirely new" Which means the customers start from scratch , which also means they have no reason not to compare with ALL the players in the field.. There's no incentive to simply "upgrade" cause they can't.

And in comparison with the other players, Mobile fusion just ain't all that great.


What they should have done.. is keep BES, and bring out a Blackberry Connect Client for Android,IOS,and nowWindows 7.. They used to have Blackberry Connect for Nokia, Siemens, Erickson, all kinds of 3rd party phones.
They should have just revamped that for Iphone and Android..At a fraction of the development cost no less. Just 3 apps, done.

The existing customer base would have been like "oh cool, so we already got the backend to do Iphone and android right here? we don't need Mobile whatever or Zenprise whatisinaname? Great!"
and the Iphone/Android crowd would have been like"oh, we can get to keep our gadget phones, and still get world class proven technology security and all it's meant to be? awesome!"
They would have been years ahead of the competition instead of slacking around at the bottom of the MDM pack..

But hey, what do i know, i'm not a CEO, CTO or CXOwhatever at any company..

[notfarnow]

Originally Posted by coldstart

I don't understand why Apple or Android doesn't offer a phone with a real physical keyboard. They both sell very similar phones. A physical keyboard is the best for business applications and easy typing.

I agree 100%, and that is the primary reason I haven't switched to an iPhone or Android. These things seem like decent alternatives, but I'm not keen on having yet another thing I have to keep charged:




I am also frustrated by the lack of apps for the blackberry... my wife has an iphone and it really does some need stuff (stargazer etc). There are also more/better productivity apps for the iphone (mileage etc)

Also, my wife's iphone also takes GREAT pics... I wouldn't chose one phone over the other based on that, but it would be be very useful for my work to be able to snap higher quality pics when I need to. Every day I shoot quick pics for work (house inspections, taking pics of broken things I need to replace, taking pics of things for reference and as reminders). The blackberry pics are appalling... surely it wouldn't be too hard for them to put on a better lens/image processor.

[KaptKaos]

Originally Posted by svandamme

What they should have done.. is keep BES, and bring out a Blackberry Connect Client for Android,IOS,and nowWindows 7.. They used to have Blackberry Connect for Nokia, Siemens, Erickson, all kinds of 3rd party phones.
They should have just revamped that for Iphone and Android..At a fraction of the development cost no less. Just 3 apps, done.

The existing customer base would have been like "oh cool, so we already got the backend to do Iphone and android right here? we don't need Mobile whatever or Zenprise whatisinaname? Great!"
and the Iphone/Android crowd would have been like"oh, we can get to keep our gadget phones, and still get world class proven technology security and all it's meant to be? awesome!"
They would have been years ahead of the competition instead of slacking around at the bottom of the MDM pack..

But hey, what do i know, i'm not a CEO, CTO or CXOwhatever at any company..

Yep. I have 1 user left on our BES. The rest are migrated, but I already had the BES in place. Would have been easier/better to just change their phone on the BES, and keep all of the high zoot security.

[flipper35]

Originally Posted by svandamme

Don't forget Domino and Groupwise support which hardly any other platform offers.

and once it has been received on the phone it's not open to anyone to read if the Admin has locked it down properly, eg, encryption on the device memory and on the SD card with mandatory password and device lock timeout..

As far as security goes, none of the others has the security capabilities on the phone like the BB has out of the box. They aren't even in the same league.

You can lock those things so hard , they become useless to even the actual user..
And so far there has only been one vulnerability, via the sdcard encryption (which anybody worth his salt when it comes to actual security would not have allowed anyway).

For corporate purposes it's still the best thing out there.
The only major negative aspect is the relyance on RIM for the SRP connectivity.. That's the Achilles heel of the entire BES> It's also what makes money for RIM and the network operators..

I know you can lock them down, but my point was that if the userdoesn't have the automatic lock and forgets to lock the phone and puts it down at a bar then someone else has access to all that info. I guess my point is that all the security in the world doesn't help when the end user leaves the front door open. Mine works fine other than I get no reception at our house so I still use my personal phone for when I am on call. There is a readon Verizon doesn't film the "Can you hear me now?" near our house.

[rcecale]

Originally Posted by stealthn

As far as BYOD it's here to stay, we recommend MobileIron over Good....

With all the faulty upgrades and misqueues that Good keeps delivering, I think messages carved in stone and delivered via slingshot would be a better option!

Randy

[stealthn]

That's what I was saying, but I would like to hear more real world experiences with Good, we have been recommending MobileIron for a couple of years

[svandamme]

Originally Posted by flipper35

I know you can lock them down, but my point was that if the userdoesn't have the automatic lock and forgets to lock the phone and puts it down at a bar then someone else has access to all that info. I guess my point is that all the security in the world doesn't help when the end user leaves the front door open.

There are IT policies to prevent that from happening.

Sure if the user sets down the phone and within 2 minutes it get's picked up, nothing can stop that from happening, on any phone or computr device

But the IT policies on BB allow it to auto lock so fast that users will be annoyed by it... It can be done way stricter then any other platform out there.. I have the list of policies they apply in Defence applications... You don't wanna know how bad those phones get locked down.. it's almost impossible to still use em with all the locks they put in place.. basically phone out, phone in, email over secure line, no apps, not even the built in ones, anything else is verboten.

[1990C4S]

Originally Posted by svandamme

But the IT policies on BB allow it to auto lock so fast that users will be annoyed by it...

I can confirm this....

[flipper35]

Originally Posted by svandamme

There are IT policies to prevent that from happening.

Sure if the user sets down the phone and within 2 minutes it get's picked up, nothing can stop that from happening, on any phone or computr device

But the IT policies on BB allow it to auto lock so fast that users will be annoyed by it... It can be done way stricter then any other platform out there.. I have the list of policies they apply in Defence applications... You don't wanna know how bad those phones get locked down.. it's almost impossible to still use em with all the locks they put in place.. basically phone out, phone in, email over secure line, no apps, not even the built in ones, anything else is verboten.

And that is why the users hate me.

[BlueSkyJaunte]

Originally Posted by flipper35

And that is why the users hate me.

It is far safer to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.

[flipper35]

Most of the people here get along with me just great, but this is a facility that gave multiple good to great awards to people for showing up on time and getting to work right away. That isn't much pf a paraphrase. One of the management asked why we couldn't allow the residents to use computers on the corporate network unsupervised. Fortunately I don't really care if they like me or not. This is my job and I do what needs to be done to remain secure. But I can do it with a smile. Mostly because I am generally a nice guy, but other times because I know it will tick someone off. I love April 1st around here.

[Scott R]

Originally Posted by flipper35

Most of the people here get along with me just great, but this is a facility that gave multiple good to great awards to people for showing up on time and getting to work right away. That isn't much pf a paraphrase. One of the management asked why we couldn't allow the residents to use computers on the corporate network unsupervised. Fortunately I don't really care if they like me or not. This is my job and I do what needs to be done to remain secure. But I can do it with a smile. Mostly because I am generally a nice guy, but other times because I know it will tick someone off. I love April 1st around here.

Everybody hates the security guys until the stuff hits the fan and you save the company from a DDOS attack, or you protect a million customers SSN numbers.

Of course the flip side is you also get the blame if that happens.

[masraum]

I don't understand why Apple or Android doesn't offer a phone with a real physical keyboard. They both sell very similar phones. A physical keyboard is the best for business applications and easy typing.

Where have you been?!? The first Google phone, the G1 had a full qwerty keyboard, the G2 also had a full keyboard. There have been at least a half a dozen other android phones with keyboards. I had both of the phones that I mentioned and only just upgraded from the G2 earlier this summer.

Frankly, since the introduction of Swype, the hardware keyboard is essentially an anachronism. Swype is much faster and easier than any physical keyboard on any phone that I've ever used.

I will say that the iPad/iPhone keyboard sucks.