blackberrys for my employees?

[jackie treehorn]

I have finally reached the point in my business where i can afford to fork over the money to get my 7 other office employees blackberrys. My question is what would be the best one to go with and what type of deal will at&t give me for doing this if they will give one at all.
I would rather do it this way since they won't have to call me on every single little thing. they can shot me an email or if an emergency arises i can still be reached. anyone with suggestions

[ssadowski]

Originally Posted by addict83

I have finally reached the point in my business where i can afford to fork over the money to get my 7 other office employees blackberrys. My question is what would be the best one to go with and what type of deal will at&t give me for doing this if they will give one at all.

If you're only purchasing 7, you're probably not going to get a volume discount on hardware or plans, but you need to get in touch with a rep from various carriers to see what plans they have for you... Here are AT&T and T-Mobile's links. I recommend these carriers for business use as the phones will be GSM phones and operate most places that have GSM networks - pretty much everywhere except for Japan.
T-Mobile's Business Plans
AT&T's Business Plans

You also need to make some decisions on whether you'll be purchasing BES to run your blackberries or if you're going to use the carrier's BIS for your email connectivity.

As far as hardware goes - what is your business stance? Are your employees going to need a full qwerty keyboard, or can they get by with the pearl's predictive touch system? I assume they won't be needing GPS capabilities on the phone, but it could be useful depending on the business!

At any rate, if it were me I'd probably go with an 88xx series phone on general principles. It's more targeted towards business use than the pearl, but I would have no problem giving curves (83xx) to employees, based on experience, if it were me.

[jackie treehorn]

Originally Posted by ssadowski

If you're only purchasing 7, you're probably not going to get a volume discount on hardware or plans, but you need to get in touch with a rep from various carriers to see what plans they have for you... Here are AT&T and T-Mobile's links. I recommend these carriers for business use as the phones will be GSM phones and operate most places that have GSM networks - pretty much everywhere except for Japan.
T-Mobile's Business Plans
AT&T's Business Plans

You also need to make some decisions on whether you'll be purchasing BES to run your blackberries or if you're going to use the carrier's BIS for your email connectivity.

As far as hardware goes - what is your business stance? Are your employees going to need a full qwerty keyboard, or can they get by with the pearl's predictive touch system? I assume they won't be needing GPS capabilities on the phone, but it could be useful depending on the business!

At any rate, if it were me I'd probably go with an 88xx series phone on general principles. It's more targeted towards business use than the pearl, but I would have no problem giving curves (83xx) to employees, based on experience, if it were me.

Well thank you for the links I'm going to call the reps today and see what i can do. as far bes or bis do you think it is nessecary for me to do bes. and as many emails that are sent to and from people all day i would rather go with curves plus gps would be used a little as some of my office people may have to run something for me everynow and then. It's a rather big decision and i just wanna weigh out my options since its something I rather new at dealing with.

[ssadowski]

Originally Posted by addict83

Well thank you for the links I'm going to call the reps today and see what i can do. as far bes or bis do you think it is nessecary for me to do bes. and as many emails that are sent to and from people all day i would rather go with curves plus gps would be used a little as some of my office people may have to run something for me everynow and then. It's a rather big decision and i just wanna weigh out my options since its something I rather new at dealing with.

You're going to have increased control over your devices if you go with BES. In addition, if you're running email in-house with MS Exchange server, it's really the best way to integrate that in to your devices. E-mail will never quite be secure when it's OTA, but you have less people touching it with BES. BIS acts as an intermediary, so email is transferred in the clear from your mail server to the BIS servers, and then from the BIS servers to the devices. Were it me, I'd avoid this if I could.

It also gives you policy control over the devices - as they would be company owned and issued to your employees, you could prevent them from setting up other applications that aren't approved.

Keep in mind that the AT&T curves come with GPS, but the T-Mobile Curves do not - only the 8820s do.

[jackie treehorn]

Originally Posted by ssadowski

You're going to have increased control over your devices if you go with BES. In addition, if you're running email in-house with MS Exchange server, it's really the best way to integrate that in to your devices. E-mail will never quite be secure when it's OTA, but you have less people touching it with BES. BIS acts as an intermediary, so email is transferred in the clear from your mail server to the BIS servers, and then from the BIS servers to the devices. Were it me, I'd avoid this if I could.

It also gives you policy control over the devices - as they would be company owned and issued to your employees, you could prevent them from setting up other applications that aren't approved.

Keep in mind that the AT&T curves come with GPS, but the T-Mobile Curves do not - only the 8820s do.

Yea i think that made my mind up on the bes or bis decision. I like the fact that i can control what apps will be able to be put on the phones since yes I'm throwing all this on the company card. And i will darned if my employess screw these things up. Like i said this i quite a big step for us, but the times change and i have to keep up. And i think I'm going to stick with AT&T I like the curve and everyone in here likes it too, so i think that was an easy decision on who to go with. Thanks for your help

[ssadowski]

No problem! Good luck!