You have a point. ActiveSync is free. But you get what you pay for - no protection from data leakage.

If the BB OS could be a virtual machine image (encrypted, sandboxed) inside an iPhone or Android phone, I would suggest that RIM pitch the idea of having control over the corporate data as Cost Of Doing Business. I'm pretty sure a large number of corporate users would be willing to pay for that.

But yeah, if Microsoft or Apple or Google decided to implement the same and give it away for free, RIM would be even more screwed than they are now.

It is a plus, but it's not nearly enough. Due to a stupid IRS ruling, we're being pushed toward people buying their own phone and we give them a stipend for corporate use. I don't see my end users opting for a BB (or BB + PlayBook) when they can get an iPhone or Galaxy or Hero or Droid.

I hate that the company data is going to be mixed with the user's personal data.

We're going to be dumping our BlackBerrys and our BES CALs because the Android and IOS devices can do almost as much, with far less security. The reality is that the big bosses want the latest high-tech jewelry, and the BB is The Old Stuff.

But RIM is fixated on selling the hardware of it's BB phone. The PlayBook is a large screen and keyboard for the BB phone. Your corporate email is still kept in the BB phone - not the PlayBook. I've got bad news for you RIM: no-one wants to wear two phones, one for work and one for personal. Even though the personal phones aren't nearly as good as the BB from a security standpoint, they are good enough. And frankly they are better at email/calendar/PIM/chat. Bye bye BB. And with that, I don't need a PlayBook either.

As an admin who has the duty to protect our information assets, I would far prefer to have those assets protected by our BES. It's an established solution and works well.

Instead of trying to make the PlayBook drag the BB along as the second phone (three devices total (are you serious RIM???)), they should be trying to give me the protection of the BES in my IOS or Android device. One device plus high security - that is an easy sell. At least this way they could keep that BES CALs revenue coming in.

Another thing wrong with switching over to personal phones is the mixing of personal data with the corporate data. But it will happen because the personal phone apps see integration as a good thing - it increases the data mining potential.

RIM is trying to make the walled garden larger by importing Android apps. I would far far prefer that my IOS or Android be able to launch the tiny walled (fortified with extreme prejudice) garden of my corporate data protected by the BES.

I've been through one acquisition, and it wasn't good. The company I was with was great, right up until a holiday disaster involving a boat and an airplane with a drunk pilot. After the crash / deaths / amputations, the owners of the company decided to sell out. My division was sold to Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) a truly vile company worthy of persecution and contempt. Xerox owns them now. By the way, avoid Xerox if at all possible. But I digress.

Where SCT was interested in customer happiness and the ability to deliver high quality services, ACS had the opposite plan. Cheap as hell, and customer happiness won't be measured unless it was forced on them in the contract. A pox on them!

I hope your merger goes better than mine.

Honestly, this is the first time in a week (or more) that I even checked the message center.

Revision 9 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure state that if a party has reason to believe that evidence may be subpoenaed, the party must keep the data (or face sanction). It's a lose-lose situation either way, and this way Google doesn't look like a place that is trying to hide a crime.

I have also learned that there is something called "in camera" which means that during a trial, you can show your data to the judge in person (he can view it with his eyes) and then make a decision whether the data should become a part of the official record. So evidence can make a difference in a trial but still be kept private.

So, I agree with you. For these exact reasons, I'm not connecting my personal phone to the system, and I carry a company supplied BlackBerry with remote-wipe capability. However, there is a wrinkle.

Tax law in the USA is such that if you make personal phone calls on your company phone, then that (the subsidy that covers the cost) is considered income for you. It is absolutely insane, and every year I hear from the phone reps "Bill XYZ was introduced to remove phone calls from taxable income status." Don't know that the bills ever got passed, though.

So if your accounting department wants to keep it's nose clean with the IRS, having a company issued phone is a horrible records keeping nightmare. Every single phone call needs to be checked for business or personal. Gah! The answer? Have the employee get a personal phone, and supply a monthly stipend. Tax-accounting-wise, it is simple.

But yeah, as someone who needs to protect the company information assets, it is horrible. You're going to retire after 30 years of service? Here's a going away present: lose all the pictures of your grandkids you took on your personal phone. It truly sucks.

Heh.

I didn't hang out on Multiply at first. But once I did move over, I found it to be fine. In fact, I bought a premium membership, because I want them to succeed, and not have the pressure to sell out the way Facebook did.

Another vote for Multiply. I have found it to be pretty good, and really enjoy the company there.

Microsoft has a history of writing code to screw over customers of non-Microsoft products. It's a position you can take only if you are so big that fucking over a few small customers doesn't hurt you in the long run.

But some of us small customers still have long memories.

We just converted from Xiotech to NetApp, and the NetApp is crap. "High end" isn't how we would describe NetApp. And their sales people lied to us (er, said things that may technically be true but are about as honest as 'pigs CAN fly with sufficient initial velocity'). They also claimed that de-dupe would save us 50% storage space. Lies.

It was a huge mistake. If it weren't for the political loss of face of having spent so much money, we would scrap it all and start over with any vendor other than NetApp.

A sixteen year ROI is never worth it. In fifteen years, the technology to replace it will be FAR advanced, and cheaper, and you will still have another year left to break even on this sucker.

The only saving grace to blowing this sort of money on a project, is that you are funding R&D for the company to develop it - assuming that the NEXT consumer gets a price break because the development has already been paid for. Otherwise, you are just lining the pockets of the Friends Of Bureaucrats.

I've used "Navigate to (name of store or gas station brand)" many times (probably more than a hundred, and I'm no road warrior). It is amazingly good at this three word task. Speaking home addresses is less successful, but that is partly because your average street address in another city is six terms, and pauses in speaking are interpreted as a 'finished' signal. With a person over the phone, the practice is to pause after the street, so the person digests it before you move on to the town. The machine wants to get on with it, and does.

I agree with you - it is nice to see the manufacturer design it in (and supposedly figure out how to extend the design in a way that makes computing pervasive within the cabin). However, I would prefer some sort of docking station for my Droid / iPod. My Droid will soon be a MiFi, and is already a super GPS. And speech-to-SMS box. And car radio. And law-enforcement-style video recorder. And eventually, a Hulu streamer.

My point is that with a dock for a general purpose device, I could do far more, and, not be locked into a monthly fee for a service my general purpose device (will soon) already provide.

I need a dock that provides a charging station without clumsy cables, line of sight to the GPS, a place where I can see the on-screen map, provide aux-in to the stereo, and an unobstructed view out the front windshield, and cooling. If you want to route an HDMI cable to the back passenger media station(s), that's a good idea too.

I mention cooling because in GPS mode my device tends to run hot. It is doing a lot, so this makes sense. I don't think it needs refrigeration, per se, but a fan might be nice. It is probably overheating due to the car mount, which wraps around the box and traps heat.