Use iPhone from Blackberry Server?

[JPK]

I did a search, but could not find a clear answer.

Our company was recently acquired by a really big company that has a lot of IT manadates:

Blackberry Devices and Lotus Notes being the silliest (although there are many other silly ones!). We currently use yahoo mail for our company email, but this is clearly too simple and too self maintained to work in the new IT environment.

Does anyone know if an iPhone can be used to get mail from a Blackberry server properly?

JPK

[ztirffritz]

You don't get email from a Blackberry server. You get mail through a Blackberry server (aka BES). The BES sits in the middle between the Blackberry and the Mail Server. Actually, RIM's NOC is in there too. Email from outside of the domain hits the mail server(ie Lotus or Exchange). The BES sees it and forwards it to the NOC in Waterloo Ontario. RIM then forwards it on to the carrier's network and on to your Blackberry. Sending an email from the Blackberry follows the path in reverse. iPhones don't use nor need the BES at all. To use an iPhone with corporate email you need to have a publicly facing mail server. In most corporate environments that means MS Exchange but it could also be a standard mail server. The MS Exchange Mobile mail solution is basically just webmail without any fancy graphics. Your phone logs in to the website, grabs the mail and parses it to separate the individual messages. This is actually, in a rare moment of MS praise, an 'elegant' solution compared to how BBs work. I've been using it with my iPhone for about 6 months now. Works very well and is fast. For corporate users, iPhones are actually cheaper and easier than BBs because you don't need the BES, you don't need BES CALs, and every single email doesn't go through Waterloo Ontario. If I were in charge of the CIA I'd LOVE RIM. You only need to tap communications for one site and you have ALL the email travelling to/from every Blackberry.

[macphanatic]

ztirffritz wrote:
every single email doesn't go through Waterloo Ontario. If I were in charge of the CIA I'd LOVE RIM. You only need to tap communications for one site and you have ALL the email travelling to/from every Blackberry.

This is also one of the biggest reliability issues with Blackberry's. Every time the servers in Waterloo hick-up, BB users everywhere have issues sending and receiving emails. RIM is finally building a second location (in Texas) to provide redundancy.

I know of several companies that have dumped BB's in an effort to reduce mobile costs. They are finding that ActiveSync devices provide email as reliably or even more reliably than BB's at a much lower cost.