[Needkeys]

Does anyone know whether you will need to upgrade to BES 12 in order to use the classic and have it synch via EAS? I have a small business and right now use a 9930 and whatever the last version of BES is that controlled synch preferences and allowed for the wireless synching of everything, including outlook contact groups. My understanding is that the OS 10 devices will wirelessly synch only via microsoft's active synch (which unfortunately does not synch contact groups...but that's ok I guess so long as I can manually re-create the groups on the device itself). Just want to know whether I would need to update my version of Bes in order to use the Classic and have it synch via active synch. Hoping I can just keep my version of bes and not incur the expense. Thanks.

[jpvj]

BES 10/12 has *nothing* to do with the synchronization which is based on EAS. It is the handset that acts as an EAS client and it talks directly to the Exchange server. If BES is installed, it only works as a "VPN tunnel".

If you choose to use a BES 10/12 server, you will achieve

• Exchange server is not exposed to the Internet
• Added MDM control (more than the MS EAS policies)
• Extra layer of encryption (IMHO not nescessary for most people)
• Potentially some ekstra compression with 10.3.1 and BES (only read about it)
• Compared to an out-of-the-box EAS setup, you will have more control over how/when/which devices can connect to the Exchange server.

BES 12 does *not* support legacy BB devices natively, but it can work with BES 5.0.4 MR10 or later.

If you are only a few persons, I would recomment moving to BB10 devices, move you mail server to Office 365. It's much, much simpler and easier than running your own infrastructure.