Microsoft to Replace Blackberry? 232
nmccart writes "According to Wired Magazine, Microsoft, along with Cingluar and Vodaphone, is planning to introduce the next generation of Windows Mobile phones that can receive e-mails "pushed" directly from servers that handle a company's messaging. This will allow companies to skip over the cost of installing a Blackberry server, and instead just use the Exchange servers that they are already using. The question becomes, now that this technology is cheaper, will my VP be buying new Windows Mobile enabled cell phones for his entire department just so we can put in more hours?"
I doubt it.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Patent infringement (Score:5, Insightful)
Same question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Only if you let him. I am on salary and work 40 hours. The first year +, I worked 60 hours plus. Then, as I automated and gaine control over recurring issues, I got more done in 40 than when I was working 60.
I was under pressure to keep working more than 40... I just said 'no'. Simple as that. And I have received a promotion since then, so no "black list" occurred.
If you aren't in a position to say 'no', get there. No job is worth working more than half of your waking hours.
Re:I doubt it.... (Score:2, Insightful)
"Hey, is that your new wireless email device with mini-qwerty keypad?"
"Hey, is that your new Blackberry?"
So no, Windows Mobile Smart Phones won't takeover until the day people stop calling every portable audio player an iPod and every PVR a TiVo.
RMS being right all along (Score:3, Insightful)
I like the headline: "MS Venture Nips at BlackBerry". How about "MS Will Eat BlackBerrys (for) Lunch." Anybody want to bet how long RIM's going to last? Two years? Three?
What's MS's deal? (Score:1, Insightful)
Now, I'm not blindly bashing MS here, but what's the deal? Don't they know when they're beat, or when they should focus on their strong points.
They keep trying to invade markets in which they have little experience or few proven solutions. It seems like every week they have an 'IPod Killer' for every damned piece of technology out there, perhaps they're spreading themselves thin, ergo releasing poor quality products across the board.
My own personal observations seem to support this, but then again I'm probably biased against microsoft (and don't give me any I'm not biased crap because everybody is in one way or another.)
The only company that seems to successful at re-inventing the wheel at this point in time seems to be Google (or possibly apple). Is MS just a lumbering giant trying to get it's greasy fingers in every bit of pie?
Late as usual (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What's MS's deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is in corporations interest to be able to play the device makers against each other, instead of being tied to Blackberry. Basically, a big company with Exchange probably has a Blackberry ent. server working with exchange, and views installing Good (to support Palm devices) as a pain, so they are stuck buying blackberries. This will allow people to become more hardware agnostic, but most places will still stick with a few supported models due to support costs.
All similar to pc software market - MS benefits as the hardware gets cheaper because it does so as it gets more pervasive - bigger market means more possible licenses for Exchange seats.
Re:No time soon... (Score:3, Insightful)
1.) BES, either Domino/Notes or Exchange (I support both) is far from stable. Between lost emails from/to handhelds, MDS errors or such, I spend about 4 hours a week supporting 1500 users on two BES (on for Exchange one for Domino/Notes). The Good Technologies solution is MUCH more robust and stable by a far margin.
2.) Windows Mobile powered crackberries are already supported by Exchange Server 2003 SP2. And it works quite well.
3.) There really are not all that many Blackberry users out there versus Exchange users (or even Domino users)
Wrong question (Score:2, Insightful)
That's a pretty stupid question. Phrased that way, the VP would be an idiot unless he has a chunk of change for over time or wants to be sure that he doesn't have some stupid IT people show up at a company function (muwahaha, I'll have them install stuff during the party so they can't show up - muwaaahhhaaahaha).
What the real questions are these: Is the value proposition greater or less than what we have? If it is greater value, then how long to pay out? Longer than the mean time to obsolescence of the new devices? What's the NPV? Should we move to an integrated solution, or stay on the best of breed? How many of the Blackberry devices are out there now in our company and what is the growth rate of the demand for them?
Oh wait - those questions aren't inflamatory so the article wouldn't have gotten posted if they were asked instead of the silly one...
Not Necessarily... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is not a juggernaut that rolls over everything that it touches. They have failed *many* times in becoming even a viable competitor in certain marketplaces, let alone a dominant force that squashes everyone. Examples of where they have not wiped out an established competitor include home finances software (vs Quicken), PDA platforms (vs Palm), game consoles (vs Sony), search engines (vs Google), web portals (vs Yahoo), DRM'ed music files (vs Apple), etc, etc, etc.
RIM is no pushover. They've been building Blackberries for almost 10 years now, and have a lot of technology experience (and a lot of patents) in their pocket. They also have a fanatical following in the corporate world, not unlike iPods in the consumer world. Sure, MS might compete, but put RIM out of business in 2-3 years. *NOT* going to happen!
Re:I doubt it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Blackberry does not have a vertical leverage like Apple has with iPod where the content and the device is controlled by a same company.
In fact, many, many, corporations use Exchange and the value proposition (not having to buy an extra wireless email service) is going to be something that is going to be very difficult for Blackberry to compete against.
Add the fact that most power-types that own Blackberries tend to upgrade their device almost every year, there is really nothing holding people back from switching their wireless e-mail service.
Security? MDS? (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Microsoft isn't exactly known for security. To my knowledge there have been very few hacks of the RIM BES product because of its' nature - it establishes outbound-only connections to the RIM servers which then link back to the wireless providers.
2) MDS. The BES allows (via this same set of secured connections) access to the corporate intranet servers (assuming it's configured to do so). I personally have found this to be a very, very useful feature. Lots of stuff in our daily business does not live in the realm of Exchange, but might live in the realm of our intranet servers. RIM made this easy by allowing admins to avoid worrying about VPN tunnels or SSL connections. Set it up, and it just works. I have a feeling that this product offering might not compete in this arena.
Re:PIN Messaging - THE killer BB app (Score:2, Insightful)
Then how does it work? If you don't have a public key to do your AES key exchange, seems like it's nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Or maybe you just have to trust RIM not to play man-in-the-middle. But if it pleases the executives...
An Assumption (Score:3, Insightful)
That assumes you're using Exchange in the first place. Not everybody does.
This is a consumer technology - not enterprise (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the main reasons that Blackberries are so popular is their use in Government. This is primarily due to the Blackberries being through several certification processes to demonstrate that they are secure and can be used to manage materiel classified up to a specific level.
The other is that they work.
Now, try to see Microsoft doing the same. They can barely get certification for products that are nearing EOL. Any Windows powered device in this kind of an environment is doomed to fail.
One of the guys here has a Windows powered smartphone - he's forever power cycling the damn thing, or just tossing it in his top drawer and walking away.
Personally I hate Blackberries - they are a PITA to manage with the executive where I work.
But I'd have to hate a Windows powered equivalent even more.
Re:Not Necessarily... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who says this is a free market? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Treo 700w (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone I know who has tried a BlackBerry has dumped their previous solution. Even a recent interviewee made note of how he successfully migrated a Treo house to BlackBerry 8700 and 7290s. The difficult part was getting the execs to try something new. As soon as they'd had a day with a BB, they were hooked.
Here's the thing...a lot of these devices try too hard to do everything. The guys at RIM have done just the opposite and stuck with it. They've focused on delivering secure wireless email (and application services) to the end-user. That's where their R&D money goes. Not on building a mini M$ office app that let's you squint at cells. If you're going to do any serious office suite work, you won't be doing it from a mobile...especially one with such a crappy KB and battery life as the Treo 700w.
For those who want to play games, get polled, unencrypted email, sure...the Treo does ok. Businesses require something more. SAP and enterprise services are the biggest growing sector of IT. It only makes sense to use an end-to-end secure wireless solution. No other vendor provides that than RIM at them moment. They write their own desktop, server and device code. They manufacture their own devices. When you control a product at that level, you can offer an unparalleled solution.
Ok...not as objective as I wanted to be (read: subjective), but consumers (and prosumers) have a lot to take into account when buying wireless. Different strokes for different folks.
Re:Who says this is a free market? (Score:2, Insightful)
So to sum up, this isn't abuse of a Monopoly. However it is an anti-consumer business tactic.
Re:How It Works (Score:3, Insightful)
Hate? (Score:1, Insightful)
Is there something I don't know about Blackberry reliability?
Obviously, yes. But that's another issue. In any case, RIM servers work with mail servers (like Exchange) - they do not handle email by themselves. You don't understand how the system works, evidently.
least secure and most expensive mail servers
Exchange is pretty stable and secure. It's complex, but no more than other enterprise-level products. I mean, this is not sendmail here. You need to understand that. And yes, it's expensive. Most large companies could care less. Just ask anyone who uses Notes, for example. A good collab system is worth its weight in gold to any medium to large company. Business pretty much comes to a halt nowadays without one.
WinCE crippled PDA
That's clever. I guess only PDAs that use other than Microsoft products are by definition not 'crippled', right?
both have records about as good as Exchange
I'd say that's a pretty good record. If you have experience in the enterprise collaboration/messaging space, please provide more specifics. 'OMG EXCHANGE IS TEH SUX' doesn't really cut it.
Are you one of those people who used the term "Nutscrape"?
Coming from someone for whom the use of "Windoze", "Winblows", "M$" and the like have become an art, I have to say that's supremely rich.
Re:PIN Messaging - THE killer BB app (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft can never provide the one BlackBerry 'killer app', and that's PIN messaging. PINs are encrypted end-to-end and never are visible to anyone other than the sender and receiver.
Did you mean: PGP or S/MIME?
Re:Ewh (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone please make my day and shoot a pretentious git who doesn't know what he's talking about.
I've had to work with Macs (OS 7 - MacTCP, anyone?) and early linux. And they sucked just as mightily. If you want to try and sound like you have an intelligent opinion, you could at least try a recent product. So what if you tried something over 5 years ago - that's like 50 years in IT terms.
Windows Mobile 5 is pretty decent, actually. Although, of course, there is room for improvement. If you have some observations about the latest version of the software, well, I might summon up some interest then.