A bit ago we heard that RIM was working on a BlackBerry Management Center solution for small businesses to centrally manage their BlackBerrys without a BES solution. This solution is called the BlackBerry Management Center and RIM is currently beta testing it with select partners. This solution is intended to allow organizations such as small businesses, not-for-profit groups, governments, and families to centrally manage their BlackBerrys by condensing already available RIM solutions.
This new solution will allow you to invite users/employees to join your Management Center and based on that you can manage their email addresses, settings, administrate BlackBerry protect, and help them find lost devices. It is actually a pretty cool service for small businesses who currently have to manage quite a few separate BIS accounts and have to singularly setup BlackBerry Protect. It also gives administrators the ability to delegate and set permissions.
Features of BlackBerry Management Center include:
- Web-based console
- Broadcast pin and message for guaranteed delivery
- Central Management of employees’ email
- Reset password
- View device details
- Delete email
- Central Management of BlackBerry Protect Features
- Lock device
- Send message
- Backup device
- Restore device
- End user Opt-in Model for device management
- Subscribe to BlackBerry Management Center
- Unsubscribe to BlackBerry Management Center
- Supports
- Yahoo!, POP, Gmail, IMAP, Hotmail, AOL and BlackBerry Internet Service Hosted Mail
- BlackBerry Device Software 4.6+
- Browsers: Windows® Internet Explorer® 7.0 and 8.0, Mozilla® Firefox® 3.5 and 3.6, Apple Safari 4.x, Opera® 10, Google Chrome™ 4.x, Browser on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet
- Localization: Software available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese.
I think this is a brilliant solution for RIM and I really think administrators will appreciate the ability to centrally manage these BIS BlackBerrys without having to fork over for a BES solution. It truly is so simple it makes you wonder why RIM did not do it before. 🙂
