6.9 Mobile BlackBerries

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You know that a device is popular when you see it in the hands of users in airports and other public places. RIM's (www.rim.net) BlackBerry device certainly passes this test and many BlackBerries connect to Exchange servers. People like the simplicity of the device and appreciate being able to receive email anywhere connectivity is offered by a network provider. RIM has been selling BlackBerry devices connected to corporate messaging systems such as Exchange and Lotus Domino, as well as IMAP/POP messaging systems, for years. In North America, you can use three wireless networks-Mobitex, DataTac, and GPRS-while elsewhere the GSM/ GPRS mobile phone protocol has expanded the scope and reach of these devices worldwide. For example, O2 and T-Mobile, major European cell providers, supply BlackBerry devices for their GPRS networks, including roaming capability, in many European countries.

Roaming between countries and across different network providers enables you to stay in touch all the time, but it is easy to run up large monthly connection charges, especially if you do a lot of international travel. GPRS roaming is only possible if your home provider has an agreement with a local network provider, and this is not always the case. The GPRS version of the BlackBerry supports SMS, the international standard for Short Message Services, which means that you can send messages to cell phones by using the phone number as the address for messages. It is much easier to compose an SMS message on a BlackBerry than through the limited keypad of a typical cell phone. Sometimes, roaming agreements between providers do not permit full GPRS connections, but you can still connect via GSM. In this situation, you can use the BlackBerry to send and receive SMS messages, just as you would do with a normal cell phone, but you cannot send and receive email. However, it is often possible to scan for all available networks and select one that does support GPRS rather than accepting the default or preferred network that the device automatically registers with when it starts up.

Another difficulty is that GPRS networks in the United States use a frequency different from those in Europe and Asia, so you cannot yet enjoy full roaming capability unless you have the proper equipment. RIM introduced its first tri-band international models (the 6230 and 7230) in June 2003. These devices support 900-, 1,800-, and 1,900-MHz GSM and GPRS networks, so assuming that a roaming agreement exists you can now use your BlackBerry around the world.

BlackBerries also support PIN-to-PIN communications, which means that you can send messages between devices using the personal identification number of the target device to transfer the message across the carrier network. PIN communications are unfriendly, because the addresses are not normal email addresses or phone numbers. Instead, they are strings, such as "200212F4," that are difficult to remember. The big advantage of PIN communications is that it works over the base network, so you can get messages to other users when your Exchange server is down. Note that the carriers always encrypt email communications across their networks, PIN messages are scrambled, and SMS messages are in plain text. This may not be an issue, because if Exchange is down and you need to get a message through to someone, you probably do not mind that the text is relatively insecure.

The BlackBerry is a great solution if you just want to send and receive email and live somewhere that a carrier provides a suitable wireless service, which can be in surprising places. While we can expect airlines to provide in-seat Internet access in airplanes in the near future and you can now use very expensive in-plane phones to connect and read email, airplanes still are the last bastion of the unconnected world. It is interesting to see people tapping away at their BlackBerries in a plane, furiously processing Inboxes while hiding their activities from the cabin crew. Depending on the reach of the network, you can read and send messages at 30,000 feet and above in the United States, while European GPRS networks do not extend quite so high, and I have only been able to send messages at relatively low levels just after take-off or before landing.

6.9.1 BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES)

You can get messages from your email account to a BlackBerry using a desktop redirector or an Enterprise server. Individual users who do not belong to a large messaging infrastructure owned by a single company tend to use the desktop redirector, while the Enterprise server is a better option when you need to connect more than small workgroups. One good reason why this is the case is because BES can deliver or accept messages even when your PC is turned off, whereas if you rely on the desktop redirector, you have to keep a PC powered up and logged in to Exchange. BES channels messages delivered to the mailboxes of registered users to their handhelds via the wireless network. You install BES on a Windows 2000 or 2003 server and can connect it to mailboxes on Exchange 5.5, Exchange 2000, or Exchange 2003 servers. The BES software uses a privileged account running as an NT service to access mailboxes and process mail. In many respects, this is an approach similar to that taken by MAPI-based antivirus products, which also need to monitor incoming messages. A single BES can handle mailboxes for up to four Exchange servers if the account BES runs under has the necessary permissions to access the mailboxes on all servers. In addition, much like any other client that uses MAPI, BES needs reasonable connectivity to the Exchange servers it handles. You can certainly have a BES connect to a mailbox across a WAN connection, but if the connection is not reliable or suffers from high latency, then BES may not be able to deliver messages to user handhelds.

There are a few minor issues to consider before you install a BES:

• You cannot run Outlook on the same server, because the versions of CDO and MAPI used by Outlook and BES are different. Indeed, you have to apply a CDO patch before you install BES. The current use of CDO and MAPI limits the number of concurrent sessions that a single BES can support. Tests performed by HP show that the limit occurs at around 800 concurrent sessions. The new Exchange System Objects (XSO) interface supported by Exchange 2003 is more efficient than the MAPI/CDO combination, and a future version of BES based on XSO is likely to be more scalable.

• You need to have a Microsoft database engine on the server to allow BES to register and hold user details. MSDE is OK for small user communities, but SQL 7.0 or SQL 2000 are better choices if you have large populations or you have already installed and licensed SQL.

• Given the speed of current systems and the relatively low resource consumption of BES, it can run alongside other applications, including SQL, unless those applications already stress system performance.

• BES uses Server Routing Protocol (SRP) to communicate with external servers, normally those used by the wireless network to accept messages and dispatch them to users. SRP uses port 3101, so you have to arrange to open this port in your external firewall. Often, the internal discussion about opening a firewall port takes longer to resolve than any other issue in a BES deployment.

• RIM releases patches and service packs for BES, so it is wise to check whether an updated release is available before you start deployment. The same is true for the RIM desktop software, and you definitely need to verify if an update is available to support new versions of Outlook. As an example, the beta versions of Outlook 2003 broke the calendar synchronization code in the desktop redirector.

• BES transfers messages to handhelds by monitoring user mailboxes for new messages. The server is multithreaded and is capable of monitoring hundreds of mailboxes while maintaining fast response in terms of processing new messages sent or received by users. When messages arrive, BES uses a mixture of CDO and MAPI calls to create copies of the messages (in this respect, BES operates in a manner similar to a first-generation Exchange antivirus scanner), converts them to plain text, and then sends the first 2,000 bytes to the hand- helds. If users need to read more than 2,000 bytes, they can request BES to send more information. Typically, the messages first pass through the corporate firewall to a relay server operated by the network provider, which then transmits the messages onward for final delivery.

• After you give people their handheld devices, you have to register them with a BES to establish communications. Figure 6.19 shows details of some of the information held in the BES user database, including statistics about the number of messages forwarded to the handheld device and sent by the user from the handheld device. Pending messages that cannot be delivered because of a network outage or because the handheld device is turned off are also noted, and the administrator can purge these messages to prevent the user from receiving a flood of new messages after the device is turned on.

  
  Figure 6.19: User properties from BES.

You probably do not want BES to redirect every message that arrives in your mailbox to the handheld device. The Redirector Settings option of the Desktop Manager allows you to create filters or rules to stop some messages at the server. In most situations, it is sufficient to set filters to restrict messages to the ones where you are a TO: or BCC: recipient, but you might also like to see messages when you are a CC: recipient. These are the filters shown in Figure 6.20. In action, these filters will not forward messages that arrive in your Inbox because you are a member of a distribution list, unless Outlook has expanded the distribution list or it is a personal distribution list. Because UCE generators often address messages to huge distribution lists, the default filters block the majority of spam, although some gets through. As you can see from the statistics for my account in Figure 6.19, in the measurement period, BES filtered 3,692 messages and forwarded 5,713, which gives you an idea of the amount of traffic I receive that is not addressed directly to me. Deciding how much mail to block is a matter of preference, and there are advantages in letting everything through. Some messages that look like spam might be important, and you can open even the most virus-ridden message on a BlackBerry in the knowledge that it cannot infect your PC.

Figure 6.20: Setting BlackBerry filters.

You can create as many filters as you want and have specific instructions for messages sent to special lists or from special people, such as your boss. The final filter is the catchall instruction to tell BES what to do with messages that do not match any filter. You can either have these messages blocked (the default option) or delivered to your handheld device. Note that BES only monitors messages arriving in your Inbox. If you want it to check other folders, you have to instruct BES to watch selected folders by entering this information in the "Folder Redirection" filter setting available through the Advanced tab. You might want to do this if you have created server-based filters for Exchange to refile messages as they arrive in your Inbox.

6.9.2 Using the BlackBerry

Although the BlackBerry keyboard is small, many find it easier to use two thumbs to drive a keyboard to create message text than tapping out the characters with a stylus or through handwriting recognition. You will not be writing War and Peace, nor will you "thumb out" anything more than a couple of hundred characters, but this is enough to respond to urgent messages, even if you mistype a lot of what you enter when you respond, as I am apt to do. Albeit with a different user interface (point and click with a stylus), the same is true of the Pocket PC. You can add a keyboard to a Pocket PC if you want, but it is just another piece of equipment to take on the road. The improved handwriting recognition engine from the Tablet PC will appear in the Pocket PC eventually, which will remove some of the recognition issues in Pocket PC 2002.

The simplicity and size of the BlackBerry make it easy to take anywhere. As an email device, you cannot get anything more compact and straightforward to use, and because it is so small, it is easy to check email anywhere- even when on the move. Another advantage is that the BlackBerry device is much easier on batteries than a Pocket PC. Even in constant use, the charge on a BlackBerry lasts up to a week (in my hands), whereas the Pocket PC drains much more quickly.

For users, the major advantage of the BlackBerry is the speed with which you can process an Inbox and deal with urgent messages. However, RIM inevitably had to compromise to create a device that clings to a belt, incorporates a keyboard, and is designed to do a few things extremely well. When compared with a Pocket PC, you find that BlackBerry handhelds limit the amount of data they download at any time to restrict network traffic. In most cases, the full content of messages arrives, but you may have to retrieve multiple "chunks" to read the complete content of large messages. This is not a problem, but some users forget to fetch more data and end up reading only part of the message. You can also restrict Pocket PC synchronization to limit the amount of data downloaded for each message, but because it downloads full messages (up to a predetermined limit) and attachments, the Pocket PC usually transmits and receives far more data than the BlackBerry does.

Even if you enable Outlook's Junk Mail processing feature or use other client-side rules to intercept offending messages en route to your Inbox, BES will forward them to your handheld, because Outlook is unable to execute a rule to delete the messages unless it is connected to your mailbox. This is more of an annoyance than a problem, because you simply delete spam as soon as it arrives. However, if your network provider charges by the byte rather than a fixed monthly fee, there is a case to argue that spam is costing you money. On the other hand, some people use their handhelds to view suspect messages before they open them with Outlook, because, so far, virus or other attacks have not targeted the BlackBerry.

Up to the advent of Service Pack 1 for BES 3.5, you could not view Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or other attachments on a Blackberry. Instead, you could install additional software to process attachments by printing on a fax or by sending messages to a conversion server, which returns the attachment in plain text. MetaMessage for Wireless from Onset Technologies^[8] is a good example of such a product. These solutions require additional hardware for the server that handles the conversion workload. In many cases, users find it simpler to wait until they get back to the office because the conversion either loses so much formatting information that you cannot easily read the document or the document is so large that navigation on the handheld device is challenging. RIM introduced its own Attachment Server in BES 3.5 SP1 to allow users to request BES to send either the table of contents or the complete content of attachments to the Attachment Server, which then converted them to a format suitable for transmission to and viewing on the handheld. The Attachment Server supports common formats like Word, Excel, PDF, and WordPerfect and RIM plans to add more formats over time. However, while it is great to be able to view an attachment, many of the complex formatting features used within documents do not show up well on the handheld's restricted screen. In addition, you may have to update the firmware on your handheld before you can select the option to request attachments. On the server side, the work to convert large documents can impose a heavy load on the computer that hosts the Attachment Server. You can also delay transmission of newly arriving messages to handhelds if you ask for large attachments and it is easy to run up big bills if your wireless contract is limited to a certain amount of "free" data traffic per month and you exceed it with attachments.

As mentioned earlier, the nature of the thumb-driven keyboard will prevent you from composing long messages. You probably only want to create quick and simple replies to incoming messages, so the fact that the editor is rudimentary in the extreme (no formatting, no spell checking, and restricted cut-and-paste functionality) will not cause any problem. You can move within the text of a message and insert special symbols after you master the necessary keystrokes, which becomes second nature for some people. However, as with most cell phones, the editor includes an auto-text facility to help compose text quicker. New users typically take some time to become accustomed to the unique BlackBerry interface and learn the shortcut keys to take full advantage of the device. Adding to the task of mastering the device, the backlit screen and keyboard are sufficient to work with messages in the dark, but it is a challenge to read text on sunny days.

Compared with a Pocket PC, the BlackBerry has limited space to hold messages, and, similar to the Pocket PC, the BlackBerry clears out old messages to make space for new. The length of time that the device holds messages is very dependent on the amount of email you receive. Even though I delete many messages immediately after sending or receiving them, I find that I can keep about four weeks' worth of email on the device. If you need to, you can save important messages for longer. The BlackBerry does not support multitasking in the same way that a Pocket PC does. You work with one application at a time, switching to others as the need arises.

Synchronization between the BlackBerry and Exchange is not quite as thorough as ActiveSync is for the Pocket PC. The normal mode of working is for the handheld to receive new messages only if it is out of its cradle, so the copy of the Inbox on the BlackBerry is never complete. The same is true of Sent Items, where the BlackBerry only has copies of messages sent from the handheld rather than the complete collection. By comparison, if you synchronize a folder with ActiveSync, you can copy the entire contents of the folder. However, on balance, the synchronization is good enough to make email, calendar, and contacts available on the BlackBerry.

6.9.3 The Good option

While RIM created the form factor and established BlackBerry-type devices as a "must-have" device in large parts of corporate America, it is not the only player in this market. Good Technologies (www.good.com) sells a comparable service that runs on RIM's own 950 and 957 handhelds as well as its own G100 device, which connects to your PC via USB instead of a cradle. This makes the G100 device easier to take on the road when you want to bring as little clutter as possible. As the second entry in the field of corporate email handhelds, Good was able to take advantage of the wider availability of wireless networks by concentrating on wireless communications for downloads and synchronization and ignoring the cradle-centric approach taken by RIM. In RIM's defense, while cradles are inconvenient at times, they allow people who do not have a corporate email account to sign up with an ISP-delivered email system and still have wireless email.

The Good handheld software is platform independent and is, therefore, not limited to the current RIM or G100 device form factor. The software can run on devices such as the Treo 600, powered by an ARM processor and running the Palm 5 operating system, or on a Pocket PC under Mobile Windows 2003. Good Technologies announced that it will support its email synchronization code on a Pocket PC, and this will be an interesting solution when Good delivers it in late 2003 or early 2004. The interaction between the Good handheld software and the GoodLink server is easier to set up than Exchange Mobile Services and works for Exchange 5.5, 2000, and 2003 mailboxes. Running Good's software on a Pocket PC instead of Pocket Outlook and ActiveSync might seem to compete with Microsoft's own products, but it does increase the number of wireless devices that can connect to Exchange, including sites that do not want to implement Exchange Mobile Services to support just a few users. The combination becomes even more compelling if you attach a keyboard to the Pocket PC to allow users to work better with email and Office documents. While teenagers have no difficulty composing long SMS messages with cell phones, it can be a challenge to face a large Inbox equipped solely with a stylus and a touch screen.

The GoodLink server software is comparable in function and purpose to BES 3.6 and includes the ability to handle attachments. Overall, the synchronization between handheld and email accounts seems smarter, possibly because Good came second to the market and knew where it could create a difference. For example, if you delete a message on a Good handheld, the GoodLink server deletes the message from your server mailbox-something that was a surprising problem for RIM until the release of BES 3.6. In North America, you can connect Good devices to Exchange 5.5, 2000, and 2003 mailboxes over the Cingular Mobitex wireless service. However, you cannot yet connect Good devices to Exchange over GSM or GPRS networks, so this is strictly a North American offering until Good manages to sign up international telecom providers to support its service in other countries (expected to begin in 2004). Given the current situation, the best advice when you consider deploying BES or the Good service to support corporate Exchange users is to test both and see which one provides most value to your organization and then go with that option.

6.9.4 Is a handheld better than a Pocket PC?

I have known people to move from the BlackBerry to a Pocket PC and vice versa. The choice is very personal and depends on the work that the user does and how mobile he or she is. From a purely mobile perspective, devices such as the BlackBerry or the G100 are still the best way to stay in touch with your email and calendar anywhere a wireless network is available. However, if you want truly portable email and applications, the combination of the Pocket PC and Exchange is the thing to have, especially if you can use a reliable wireless connection. Stay tuned to the developments that Good Technologies plans for the Pocket PC platform, and do not assume that Microsoft offers the only options to connect these devices wirelessly.

A Pocket PC connected to a cellular phone (especially over GPRS) or even one of the new Microsoft smartphones do a reasonable job of getting to your Inbox, but once high-speed wireless connectivity becomes a reality everywhere, the extra features and growing maturity of the Pocket PC will make the battle between the different access devices even harder to call.

^[8] . http://www.onsettechnology.com/.

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