[apenay]

I can't believe I'm the first one to post in this section. Woohoo!?

I got an email from our new Blackberry account manager last night so I figured it was a good opportunity to bring up some concerns I had with BES 10.

I told her that BES 10 was not easy to set up but once you get it up and running it's a pretty nice UI and in my opinion easier to administer than other MDM vendors. I also asked about trading older BES licenses for BES 10 licenses. All fine and dandy.

Then I got to the meat of what I wanted to dicuss. Pricing for BES usage. As you may know BES 10 is comprised of 3 components. UDS (Universal Device Service) which manages iOS and Android devices. BDS (Blackberry Device Service) which manages all QNX devices. Blackberry Fusion with is the interface to manage UDS, BDS, and BES 5 domains.

Blackberry UDS is priced per user. So a user can have multiple devices (iPad, iphone, SGS3) but it's only 1 license ($99 per CAL). There's no Cal for Blackberry devices but a company gets charged by overall user count in your BES environment for the annual maintenance contract. This has always been the case with Blackberry.

Consider this scenario:
A company implements a BYOD initiative and chooses a mobile device management solution that is now required in order to access company data. Straight ActiveSync will no longer be allowed since the company has little control over the devices other than doing a complete wipe if necessary. Let's say BES 10 is the MDM solution choosen (yay!). The company buys the Cals necessary for their iOS and Android users. This is great for the company because now it can finally secure the data and manage those those devices that were previously only using ActiveSync and practically unmanageable. The iOS and Android users pay the normal data plan charges on their bill since it doesn't need to be provision by the carrier in order to use the MDM client.

The story is different for Blackberry users. Their devices need to be provisioned by the carrier in order to do an Enterprise activation via BES which is an extra $15 (AT&T) (you don't even get more data to go with it!). There's no way around it. Even though BB10 can finally use ActivateSync for email access now this is no longer an option if the company requires all connected devices to be fully manageable. Given this situation I think most users would be willing to switch to a different platform in order to access corporate email rather than pay $15 each month out of their own pocket even if they personally prefer a BB10 device.

It's really a double whammy since a BB10 device on BES will cost both the company money (for maintenance contract) and the end user (additional $15 for their monthly premium). This is also adding insult to injury because now not only are users forced to buy their own devices to use for work, if you want to use a Blackberry you are literally paying even more in order to be tied to work at all times whereas for iOS and Android users it's no skin off their back to connect to comany email so why not. This is a great disadvantage for Blackberry in my opinion.

The trend is definitely towards BYOD so if Blackberry doesn't change this pricing structure they are going to lose a lot of users who may WANT to use a Blackberry but aren't willing to pay extra in order to do so. This is a real shame since Blackberry Balance works really well but it will be all for naught if users don't choose a Blackberry to begin with. I think Blackberry needs to charge the company for a Cal like they do for iOS and Android devices rather than collect the monthly service revenue from the end user. Blackberry might lose out on a bit of revenue ($99 vs $180 per year) but they would have a better chance of keeping more of their market share (perhaps even gain) in terms of overall users which is really the main concern for the company right now.

[anon(153966)]

You raise some good points here. I've not even started to dig into the latest BES pricing. At our company we're about to start working on proposals and projects to setup a BYOD type offer.

Clearly based on the figures etc. you listed about, I have some interesting times ahead!

[mafatlal]

Great points and very well written! I am now charged with evaluating BlackBerry for my Org and this info is very helpful.

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[deebo550]

I'll have to check our business account but I'm on att and attached to a bes10 and I don't think I have any special plan other than a blackberry 4G plan

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[deebo550]

AT&T Mobile Share(R) Personal for BlackBerry(R) 4G LTE with Visual Voicemail (10-50)

AT&T Mobile Share(R) with Unlimited Talk & Text


My balance setting screen


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[apenay]

Deebo550,

After seeing your post I went back and tried enterprise setup again. It took a while to figure out but long story short the server address for activesync that is configured in the email profile within BES is not the same as the address used for normal activesync configuration.

For the BES email profile I had to set it to use my internal server address name rather that the public address that we typically use for all other devices. It seems like once the work enterprise workspace is set up it wants/needs to use internal resources for look ups.

This was a real headscratcher for me because using the public activesync address when configuring the "Microsoft Exchange Activesync" on my Z10 worked fine but then using the same settings within BES for enterprise activation didn't work. My company's internal network doesn?t resolve the public activesync address so that might have complicated things as well.

Either way I'm really glad that there isn't an extra cost to the user in order to take advantage of Blackberry Balance. It didn?t help that AT&T insisted that an enterprise plan was needed in order to use BES which was the case previously with older devices. But with activesync it really didn?t make sense to me why it would continue to be the case. There is still a lot of confusion regarding this but I'm glad I came to a definitive conclusion with my testing thanks to deebo550's response.

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[deebo550]

Glad to help.

We also have a bes express and I didn't have a bes plan on att with my 9000,9100,9700 or 9810.

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[apenay]

BES express is great for small businesses. So did you guys upgrade to BES 10? Paying now?

I can now whole heartedly endorse BB10 to my users since it on level playing grounds with other devices in terms of cost.

BTW I love the fact that I don't have to lock my entire device now due to activesync policy. The work space has its own password. Gotta love BlackBerry Balance!!!!

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[sidhuk]

Hi Apeney, can you clarify more? In the first post you said that there is disadvantage to bb customers to shell out $15 extra per month as oppose to BYOD. Then in the last post you are saying all is good and you are happy with leveled playing fields?

[apenay]

Sidhuk,

I had trouble getting the email portion of enterprise activation to work initially which I thought was due to carrier provisioning. But after deebo550 said it worked for them I looked into my bes settings some more. (see problem explained a few post up.)





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[Bluenoser63]

We installed our own BES 10 server. The server was free, just had to install it to a VM. It is $99 per device for either a UDS or BDS device. What you are doing is outsourcing your IT department to the cell phone provider rather than paying for an IT manager like myself. BB isn't charging you, the telco is.

[deebo550]

Since the majority of our users are iphone we are paying for bes10 uds cals. We still have a handful of people on our besx server and a few on bes10 bds

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[Kiss Yah]

Wow! I didn't know that. But I can't really relate because my data plan remains the same even if I have workspace installed on my Z10.

Guess my company shouldered everything

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