[Briggsy_Bold]

BBM sets blackberry apart. As a business app developer we welcome BBM API�s giving us access to this one of a kind application.

When writing business apps for example, a meter reading application, the actual meter data is crucial to the workings of this application. In fact the handling of this meter data is just as important as the application is.

Building an app to read water meters, up to 200 per day means transferring data to a billing system. The data could be passed in several forms but online we can pass it as a JSON object.

Let's look at some of the obvious methods of transferring this meter reading data.
1. If the device is connected to the Internet, just post the data.
2. But what if the meter is in a factory basement, no Internet, then just save the data locally and sync when available, but the application has to be running when it's time for syncing or data just does not get passed.
3. Use the old reliable; we all hate it, the faithful USB tether at end of work day.

#2 is the option most of us use, save locally and then sync when available. This means every company that writes a mobile application that needs to pass data to and from a server, writes their own syncing code, some good and some bad, but lots of us do it.

BUT wait a minute BBM is already here. The infrastructure is already in place. If all we had to do is pass some data to BBM and let BBM transfer it, companies around the world would sign up for BBM-DATA Account knowing they could pull data from a Blackberry device. That�s right PULL data. We all know Rim was the first to utilize push, but now we need PULL!

Pull, what a concept. BBM is already handling BBM messages sufficiently and will work if there is a connection or not. So if Rim utilized BBM to handle pull technology it could also do the reverse BBM Push Data. BBM Push what the heck is that, please read on.

Let�s look at BBM Push, going one step further. If a company had 100 sales people around the world and was selling a product that was highly perishable, the price list and availability of this perishable product may change daily if not hourly. If the company could BBM Push a data object into the hand set it could have up to date price lists in their people's hands. In fact it could have individualized price lists in different languages. BBM Push would ensure that the data object got to the hand set it was intended for. Again the BBM infrastructure is already in place!

We all know mobile is the future, but connection is not guaranteed. Talk to your Rim people and ask them to give us a data transfer platform to push & pull data to from a hand set device securely, just like BBM is now.

BBM sets the blackberry platform apart, we as users could develop this further and think about the Revenue Stream for Rim, companies all around the world would sign up for secure BBM style data transfer and pay for this service. That means our stock would go up!

Please leave a comment!

[Zirak]

I had a similar thought with the way I do service work. I took a lot from Thor in an interview I read here last week(?) where he talked about he is the only 1 with infrastructure with xx number of carriers, etc. It left me in a good frame of mind with RIM.

[LoganSix]

I want to add BBM to my current company application. Basically notify the other users in a tech's group when the tech accepts a service call.

Right now I am just trying to get the app up to OS 6.