At the GSM Mobile World Congress in Barcelona RIM have announced an all-new flavour of BES Express (aka BlackBerry Professional Software).

Until now BPS has offered a streamlined version of the full BlackBerry Enterprise Server product, free to download and install for a single user, with additional user licenses (CALs) needing to be purchased, up to a maximum of 30 users (beyond which you'd need to upgrade to a full BES).

BPS is also yet to be upgraded to offer the features supported by handsets running version 5.0 of the device software.

BPS also required that users have the BES service enabled on their SIM card.

All that has now changed.

BES Express is now* still free to download....but all CALs are FREE....and there is NO LIMIT on how many CALs you may have.

The big news is that BES Express will work on the BIS tariff (BlackBerry Internet Service) - meaning that companies can now enjoy Exchange-based push email delivery on BlackBerry handhelds for approximately £5-£8 per user per month rather than the £25 a BES tariff requires...the cost of which may have been a barrier to adopting a BlackBerry solution previously.

This is a logical decision when you consider that Microsoft's Exchange ActiveSync protocol is effectively free (and can be used on Windows Mobile, Symbian, iPhone and Android devices), and to use BlackBerry with Exchange...you need to have an Exchange Server anyway.

With BPS, RIM provided a solution for the SoHo market, but there was no proportional upgrade from the 30-user business to, say, the 50-user business: once you reached the BPS cap of 30 users, to have 31 users you had no choice but to upgrade to a full BES - but not everyone needs the sheer wealth of features full BES offers in terms of device management and integration with third-party back-end Line Of Business (LOB) services, etc. BES Express addresses this gap in the market.

BES Express can be installed directly onto an Exchange or SBS server. RIM state a recommended maximum of 75 users on an Exchange-based BES Express installation before you start to consider using dedicated hardware. I will be providing setup guides very shortly.

* I say "now": BES Express won't be available for download until 1st March.

So the upshot of all this is that BlackBerry functionality is now effectively a free bolt-on to Exchange. There are some caveats however...

• The software will only work with Exchange 2003 or later (no Exchange 2000 support, and no support for Domino or Groupwise)
• There will be no over the air enterprise activation functionality (when used with the BIS tariff on client devices)
• There will be no instant messaging integration with OCS or Lotus SameTime (you’ll need full BES for this)
• The IT policy will be a limited set of 35 features (not the 450 policies available in full BES)
• BES Express cannot be installed in a High Availability deployment
• BES Express will not feature the MDS Integration Service, so it will not be possible to integrate with third party back-end systems (you can’t do this with BPS either, you need full BES)
• The BlackBerry Monitoring Service will not be available
• The web administration service will have 6 pre-defined administrative roles, which cannot be customised

The main news to take away is that the software will be free, client licenses will be free and unlimited, and it can be installed directly onto the Exchange server – so it is effectively a free add-on to Exchange that provides support for BlackBerry client devices (provided you have a BIS tariff on your SIM).

The bad news is that users of Exchange 2000 now have no mobility solution from RIM, and will have to upgrade their Exchange installation.

You can read more on the BlackBerry web site - http://na.blackberry.com/eng/services/business/server/express/

RIM have also released a comparison chart detailing the features available in all versions of the BES product- http://na.blackberry.com/eng/services/business/server/express/Comparison...