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Question: Can I deploy BES and BES Express with Exchange 2010? Any tips for doing this if possible?

Background: We have a lot of users with personal BlackBerry's and we would like to allow them to start using their devices for receviing corporate email. We don't need full BES features for these users, just the ability to enforce passwords and remotely wipe. Plus users have never wanted to upgrade their data plans to the more expensive BES plans. So BES Express is a great fit.

We already have an existing BES, for corporate owned BB's. We want to keep this as is allows us to enforce several policies not available on BES Express.

ITGuy24
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2 Answers2

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You would have to run the two systems on separate servers and administer them from separate interfaces, but I don't see why this wouldn't work, so long as you don't try and enable an account for BES on both systems.

BES doesn't make any changes to Exchange, it just reads data from Exchange and communicates this to the blackberry devices (maybe a little simplified, but you get the point) so Exchange should happily talk to both servers so long as your credentials and permisisons are setup right.

Sam Cogan
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I believe BES Express only supports two users. How many personal Blackberry's are you going to support? Using BES Express could become cumbersome if you have more than a few users.

joeqwerty
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  • RIM has drastically changed BES Express with the latest release. It is still free and doesn't require CALs, but can support up to 2000 users. http://na.blackberry.com/eng/services/business/server/express/RIM707_System_Requirements.pdf – ITGuy24 Mar 18 '10 at 12:15
  • I would make sure that running more than 2 users doen't require CAL's as the main BES Express page says it supports 2 users, while the features page says it can support up to 2,000 users. I'm thinking that to support up to 2,000 users requires CAL's. Also, it doesn't look like BES and BES Express can co-exist in the same domain, according to the system requirements. http://na.blackberry.com/eng/services/business/server/express/?CPID=OTC-RFBPSE – joeqwerty Mar 18 '10 at 12:34
  • @ITGuy24: The link you posted (same as mine I believe) doesn't mention CAL's at all. The OP would be wise to contact RIM and find out exactly what he can and can't do with BES Express. Logic tells me that a business model that allows a customer to connect 2,000 BES users for free would put a damper on RIM's profit margins, as the bulk of their customer base is probably installations of 2,000 users or less. – joeqwerty Mar 18 '10 at 12:39
  • Heres an link from RIM that mentions the no user license fees. http://blogs.blackberry.com/2010/02/introducing-blackberry-enterprise-server-express/ The idea behind the release to compete with ActiveSync, thus maintain market share in the Small Business sector. – ITGuy24 Mar 18 '10 at 14:28