The free BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express software for small and medium businesses announced back at Mobile World Congress has just been updated to 5.0.2. What are the new features, you ask?
- Single sign-on (no passwords needed to securely access the intranet, files or business systems “behind the firewall,” BlackBerry Web Desktop Manager and BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express’ BlackBerry Administration Service)
- New employee self-service tools for securing a lost or stolen device
- Added web browser support for BlackBerry Administration Service and BlackBerry Web Desktop Manager, including Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome 4.0 and Safari 4
- Added support for Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft® Hyper-V™ 2008, and SQL Server 2008.
BESX was introduced as a way to offer most of the full enterprise functions to small groups for free. The niche had previously been occupied by BlackBerry Professional Software, and to a lesser extent, BlackBerry Unite. BlackBerry server software offers handheld users to remotely access e-mails that aren’t saved on the device any more, sync up flags, contacts, and address books, and provide remote file access. While many powerhouse features are still saved for the full retail version of BES, all those listed above were ported directly from the premium to the free software.
For more information on BESX and download links, hit up RIM’s dedicated page over here.