Blackberry Messenger with BES server

We have a BES server in our organization with MS Exchange 2003. One of our managers is telling folks to use Blackberry Messenger in the event we have a BES outage to continue communicating if necessary. He sent an email stating that if the Data Center is down which has our BES server down, users can still communicate BB to BB via Messenger with PIN's.

Is he correct or if the BES is down so will BB Messenger?

Thanks for any clarification.

Kevin

Any thoughts on where I can find this answer??

Please help...

Kevin

Blackberry Messenger does indeed use PIN and is not reliant on the BES server, so if it goes down but you still have network coverage you can use the messenger (providing that messenger has not been disabled by policy).

Also, if your company has a TSupport contract with RIM at a certain level RIM will send out status messages to all PIN numbers on your server for you in the event of an issue

Thank-you so much for your help!!!

Kevin