back to article Bye bye BlackBerry mail

European BlackBerry users got an unexpected afternoon off today as the service stopped delivering mail from soon after lunch, forcing them to pay attention in meetings and, in some cases, speak to people. We tried to contact RIM, but the company prefers to communicate via email, which is a shame given the circumstances. UK …

COMMENTS

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  1. Adam H
    Go

    Worked fine for me ..

    Im on Orange and had no downtime on my Crackberry at any point today.

  2. Simon Painter
    IT Angle

    Doh

    "BlackBerry pioneered the idea of pushed e-mail, with an architecture based on a central server and a genuine-push mechanism based on notifications sent over the SMS channel. It was a clever idea, but is starting to look slightly dated now that most handsets are able to regularly poll for e-mail and data tariffs are cheap enough to let them. BlackBerrys still have some edge in corporate environments, but the functionality that made the system unique is now pretty-much ubiquitous."

    Never worked in a corporate IT environment, have you? Show me a competitor that has the same breadth of central management and policy enforcement options and I will happily hand them my life savings as an investor. If I am letting someone out the door with data on a device then I want to know that I can enforce encryption, password policies, control what apps they load on it and wipe it if they lose it; that functionality is far from ubiquitous.

    Until MS do Group Policy for Windows mobile smartphones there just won't be any competition in corporates.

    iPhone you say?

    ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

    That is all.

  3. Henry Wertz Gold badge

    Not too ubiquitous?

    "BlackBerrys still have some edge in corporate environments, but the functionality that made the system unique is now pretty-much ubiquitous."

    I'm just not sure that's true. Getting E-Mail on the road, if you really want to, is pretty ubiquitous. I can buy an app for my plain-ol-cellphone (i.e. not any smartphone by a long shot...) to do this. But (or so I've heard) Blackberrys have extra security features, including remote wiping a device and even remote disabling it (so when someone realizes it's been stolen, it can be told to "self-destruct"). Enterprise types are big on this kind of thing.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Not before time either.....

    I've never been able to see the reason why so many people I meet still rave about their BlackBerrys......using a Windows Mobile device allows direct sync with their own Exchange Server(s) without the need for anything ""in the middle" as do their BlackBerrys.

    If they don't have their own BlackBerry Server(s) then everything goes via RIM which to my mind is less secure than a direct connection to your own system?

    ....or is it just me.....?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Not quite. . .

    "BlackBerrys still have some edge in corporate environments, but the functionality that made the system unique is now pretty-much ubiquitous."

    RIM's propriety technology does employ heavy compression saving lots on data volume. So yes ActiveSync OTA etc. can,(if configured properly) perform almost identically but network wise there is a cost difference although as an end user you might not see this.

    You also have the advantage that GSM networks that deploy RIM products use a customised APN. Whereas most of your third party push email solutions will probably use the networks standard APN which is likely to be modified over time potentially upsetting the service. It's also likely overall that the RIM APN will have better uptime. (The outage today was RIM's NOC elements not the links from operators.)

    Additionally the security certifications/compliance and granular device policy (400+ items on BES 4.1 +) are still unmatched by Microsoft et al.

    When Microsoft releases Exchange 2010 I'll reassess using BES. But until then I can't stand Microsoft's chatty protocols and high overheads, more importantly the lack of real security.

  6. Corin

    Dated idea?

    Dated perhaps, but it still works.

    If my phone polls every 15 minutes for new mails, then it will have to do so each and every 15 minutes. With a blackberry, the device can sit idle until informed that there's new mail, thus saving battery.

  7. Rob McDougall
    Joke

    Stop

    RIMming.

  8. Robert Moore
    Thumb Up

    Riiiiight

    "which is all it takes to convince some customers to go elsewhere."

    Yeah, like the CrackBerry addicts will ever go elsewhere.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I always thought the main advantage of the Blackberry

    was the ability to show all your confidential business email to other commuters while ostentatiously rolling the trackball around

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Title?

    BlackBerries are preferred because tons of other reasons. Remote administration, reset, superb synchronisation, etc. Oh, I forgot, those are also really good phones, designed to be phones not be-it-alls.

  11. PunkTiger
    Thumb Up

    I can't see you, I don't need you.

    NICE Move reference! Full marks for that one.

  12. Neil Kay
    Paris Hilton

    'tis a Joke

    The need to have a mandatory - chargeable - BIS or BES account just to pick up mail is nothing more than a lock-in to earn additional revenue considering that every man and their dog (except RIM) has managed to somehow squeeze POP/IMAP and SMTP support into their phones. It''s also incongruous to have to hand over to RIM (via Vodafone in our case) our email account logins and passwords so they can go fetch users' message just to shove them down to the phones. Being cynical, I wonder what happens to these emails as they pass through RIM's hands (data mining, anyone?)

    Sadly our company Managers and Directors looked no further than the hype and cock-waving 'mystique' of having a Blackberry rather than the practicalities.

    Meanwhile in Support, we 'cope' with our HTC Touch Pros picking up our mail, giving us RDP access to our Windows servers, SSH logins to our Linux servers, FTP wifi tools etc.

    /Paris, because she probably knows what it's like to get shafted.

  13. Stevie

    Goodbye Blackberry Mail

    I can't see you

    I don't need you

  14. The Envoy
    Thumb Up

    sing-a-long headlines?

    Is there a "headline assembler" working for you that is old enough to remember The Move ... or is it just my mind on swine-flu?

  15. Martin Guthrie

    SMS??

    "BlackBerry pioneered the idea of pushed e-mail, with an architecture based on a central server and a genuine-push mechanism based on notifications sent over the SMS channel. It was a clever idea, but is starting to look slightly dated now "

    Erm, no they didn't - because it doesn't and never has used SMS (which is a fairly slow and unreliable way of sending *any* sort of info). You don't actually know how it works at all do you?? Perhaps you ought to do a little more basic research before typing this sort of twaddle!

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pioneered? I don't think so

    "BlackBerry pioneered the idea of pushed e-mail, with an architecture based on a central server and a genuine-push mechanism based on notifications sent over the SMS channel."

    I was working on the same technology architecture in Stockholm back in 1995 way before RIM introduced their BlackBerry (according to Wiki this was in 1999). Sendit AB was subsequently acquired by a certain Redmond-based company, and I understand the IPR was chucked into their Exchange famiy before the Stockholm office was closed down...

  17. Matthew Harris
    Thumb Down

    Wider than just Europe

    I'm in Dubai and the Blackberry email service stopped working here yesterday afternoon as well on the Etisalat network.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Simon Painter

    "ha ha"

    He's getting worried.

  19. JohnG

    Centralised management...

    .. is available for Windows Mobile devices. I understand Nokia has something similar for their Intellisync software. If the Blackberry salesmen told you different, you've been had.

    Would an organisation in the EU using Blackberrys really be able to meet data privacy legislation if they don't know where RIM is storing their data? You might connect to a RIM server in the UK but that doesn't mean that's where the data is kept.

    Then there's the issue of placing the Blackberry Enterprise Server in the internal network (there was a proof of concept trojan to allow proxy access through a Blackberry device via RIM and the BES into a corporate network).

  20. Dave

    Push Email

    I've got push email on my Nokia S60-based E71. It talks quite happily with my IMAP server at home. It even has a free add-on that lets me sync my work email with the company Exchange server and has enough awareness of corporate policy to make sure I've got a lock code on the device to make it harder for thieves to gain access to my data. So, no Blackberry, no Windows and it's not an iPhone.

  21. Rich Harding
    Stop

    Close but...

    Surely the headline should be "Goodbye Blackberry mail"?

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