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I want to become one of the many Blackberry users; however, I work for a small company that has a Microsoft Exchange server, but won't spring for a Blackberry server. Our IT guy is insistent that the MS Exchange server won't push our emails to a Blackberry like it does to my current smartphone. Does anyone know if this is really the case?
Thanks!
We just switched over to MS Exchange. They set up the Outlook Web Access (OWA) as well. I don't know enough about that side to tell you if that is a seperate IT set-up or not....
But what I can tell you is that I added my work e-mail address via BIS. The IT guys furnished the OWA settings to me, and it was quick. My email is now pushed to my BB.
So just ask them if they are allowing OWA, and you "should" be good to go.
I am going to play consultant for a bit..........
While it may be possible to push work emails to a personal BIS BB, what do corporate policies say? Are you allowed to by policy? If not, and you do receive the emails, you are taking on a tremendous amount of personal risk that would otherwise be risk taken on by the corporation as a whole.
Penalties for violations of Privacy legislation can be severe and could financially ruin an individual. Don't think a company won't pawn the effects of a data breach on an individual if that individual knowingly violated corporate policy.
All I am saying, is be aware of what your choices entail. If your company says it is ok to do this, then get it in writing. And even if you do, know that a company's policies may not be in compliance with State and Federal regulations, such as the about to be "live" MA reg, 201 CMR 17:00: Standards for the Protection of Personal Information of Residents of the Commonwealth.
That's my $.02 for now......
Good 2�, but whoa, talk about a buzz kill! :D
For the OP, this sounds like overkill. Especially since their company already pushes email to the existing smartphone (HTC?). Given that, it sounds like they may already be using OWA, but don't know that you can get the BB to work with OWA (instead of the usual BE$ setup).
Not to take away from the point of current, and future, privacy legistlation. Sooner or later it will come into alignment with technology, but meanwhile I'd hate to be the trial case. In any case, usage of personal smartphones, notebooks, etc.. for accessing Corporate resources is proceeding quickly.
For my 1/2�, I'm predicting that within the foreseeable future most employees will be required to provide their own technology (BB, iPhone, Notebook, ...) as a condition of employment. The company will probably offer up some $$ to assist, but thats about it.
Corporate life is full of these types of issues, but it is unlikely to be too much of a problem where the company allows someone's private phone to connect to their server. The truly security-conscious companies use BES and have restrictive policies on what can be done with or on the phone.
OWA access will work, it just won't be immediate push like an ActiveSync client would have. A possible solution is AstraSync
. Using AstraSync, For $50/year you can have access to an Exchange server without even using BIS. It just uses a tcp/ip network connection. I presume they licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft. I tried it briefly and found it to be too big and sluggish for my feeble 8310, but a more modern phone might handle it well. A couple of weaknesses are that it doesn't use the regular message folder and doesn't use the blinking llight for notifications.