My firm is now charging me $70/year to keep our BES? Anybody else pay?

Ok so I am totally shocked that the head of my IT department just sent this email out:

"Over the past year you have requested your Blackberry be connected to your pittsburghmoves email through a server called a BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server). This is the only way you can connect your Blackberry to your email account. Until now I have picked up the licensing cost under my budget but due to budget constraints and more importantly the significant increase in users I must now pass those costs onto you.

The price per license is $70/yr from RIM (Research in Motion) which is a NRT discounted price(Coldwell Banker makes no profit). I need to reorder the licenses for 2008 for those who wish to continue using this service. Please reply no later than close of business Monday as to whether you are willing to absorb this cost or wish to discontinue the service. No reply will be taken as a no thank you. For those of you who want to terminate I will close your Blackberry account later next week and for those who are willing to pick up the license cost I will get with accounting to figure out how to collect. Please let me know if you have any questions."

FYI, I am a real estate agent rather than an employee of a firm. Does anybody else have to pay? I've been using our BES for more than a year now and this is news to me. Of course, I am going to pay, but I'm not happy. Or, is this the normal thing and I'm just being whiny? Perhaps with the advent of the Pearl, we now have more "users"? Why don't the Palm Treo folks pay up too?? LOL.

Can you just transfer everything ti a BIS? I asm not on a BES so I couldn't tell you.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

I posted this in your other thread at another forum....If that's all they're going to charge you, it's a good deal for what you get. IMHO.

I thought this looked familiar :)

Perhaps you could start by asking them exactly what the cost is going to cover. Is it really for licenses, or is it for the support from RIM.

The support does have to be paid yearly and involves 2 different fees: 1 cost per server and then 1 cost for each license. It also depends on what level of support they get (there are 5). We get the 2nd level of support so had to pay $625 per server (x4) and then $25 per license (800 licenses). Our IT dept budgets for this every year (and does not charge the cost back to the individual departments). Thankfully I budgeted right on target since the cost doubled from last year.

We currently pay a 1 time fee of $60per device. Rumor is, it will be a monthly or yearly charge in the coming future and what that cost will be hasnt been mentioned. :(

Originally Posted by John Clark

I posted this in your other thread at another forum....If that's all they're going to charge you, it's a good deal for what you get. IMHO.

I have to agree here, I pay more in 1 month for BIS...then what you would pay for a whole YEAR of BES lol.

One time yearly cost @ my wifes' employer. Commercial real estate investment firm.

The license per user is a one of cost. Only if new users are to be added to BES and it does not have availlable license do u have to buy extra cals (license)

The only yearly cost is the support which I'm sure if your company has a good BES admin there is no need for that. Our company is small with 120 users on BES and we manage it on our own (hardly much) without paying for support..

Well I guess its your company policy and if you change to BIS, you most likely will feel downgraded.. I guess u will have to pay...

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com