Google has unveiled a new service that will pushGmail and calendar items to the native client software on BlackBerrydevices, stepping up the search giant’s efforts in the enterprise market.
The service will be included with the Premier and Education editions ofGoogle Apps. End-users will find their Google messages pushed to the e-mailclient on their BlackBerry, and messages sent from their phones will appearto have come from their organization’s Google mail account.
They’ll be able to access their organization’s Google address list fromtheir phone, and to synchronize contacts and calendar items. The service isin beta and will be commercially available in July.
The service requires organizations to add a piece of software to theirBlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), and that software is available todayonly for the Microsoft Exchange version of BES. The software connects backto Google’s mail servers, rather than the company’s Exchange server, tosynchronize mail, contacts and calendar items.
The service steps up Google’s rivalry with Microsoft in the enterprise, butit does have some weaknesses. Initially, calendar items can be synchronizedonly from the server to the user’s phone. So if a user makes a new calendarentry on their BlackBerry, it won’t be synched back to their onlinecalendar. An upgrade that supports two-way synch should come by the end ofthe year, said Raju Gulabani, product management director for Google Apps.
In addition, the service will initially support only 250 users per BES. ABES can typically handle at least 500 users, sometimes many more. If anenterprise wants to support more than 250 Google Apps users it will have touse an additional BES.
Some functions of the beta version available today don’t work smoothly withthe BlackBerry. For example, calendar item reminders that appear in a user’sinbox are formatted awkwardly, with what appear to be images that don’t loadproperly.
In some areas, Google has had to work around the BlackBerry’s limitations.For instance, the BlackBerry mail client only lets users search e-mails thatarrived within the past month. To look for older messages, a user has to loginto a separate Google Mobile App client on the phone.
Google thinks the new service will encourage more businesses to use GoogleApps. Organizations use Google Apps because it can be cheaper and easier tomaintain than an on-premise system such as Exchange or Lotus Notes, Gulabanisaid. Some end-users want the familiar experience of receiving e-mail ontheir BlackBerry, however, hence Google is offering the new push service.
Google plans to update the service over time, by improving the end-userexperience and increasing the number of users that can be supported on a BESserver, Gulabani said.
