BES vs Exchange ActiveSync
 

Not so much a BB vs iPhone question, but similar.

I have been using a blackberry for years now on both BIS and BES within my work environment. More recently I have been trying Exchange ActiveSync on the new iPhone as well.

The iPhone has some nice touches about it, I find it to be a better multimedia device, but the berry (8120, 8310 and in a day or two soon a Bold) is a more practical utilitarian device. I veer between the "I should keep my berry and get a touch" and "stick with iPhone despite some of the shortcomings" camp.

However, my question goes to the corporate email functionality of ActiveSync and Exchange vs BES, and I would appreciate some insight/advice from the more experienced here.

On the iPhone, for ordinary to light corp email, calendar and contacts, broadly speaking all seems fine and not too dissimilar in experience from blackberry (some plus points for each, some minus - lack of cut/paste, some occasional software lag and so on).

However, one significant negative on the iPhone and Exchange ActiveSync appears to be that, unlike the berry and BES, each time you want to forward an email from your inbox which has a sizeable attachment, your device (in this case the iPhone) has to send the full file, ie if you have an email with a 1mb attachment, your iPhone has to send a 1mb file in full. This is undesirable for me as it eats alot of data (particularly problematic if you're abroad), and also takes a long time (slowing the phone, occasionally freezing it for a bit, and a massive pain if you're in a hurry or in spotty coverage, like the underground or a train).

On a berry (at least on BES), when you get an attachment, you can forward it, no matter how large, in a second or two. My understanding of this is that your berry is not downloading the file (unless you want to take a look at it yourself), it simply forwards it on the server side, ie without having to push to the handset first.

Is there any way to mimic this on Exchange ActiveSync? more specifically on the iPhone? At the moment, it's the most problematic issue I am having with the iPhone, and one I can see being a massive problem at work if I was to substitute iPhone for berry, as we get pdf attachments to our emails often 2-5 mb in size from clients. When I forward them, I don't want to be sitting here forever when my berry just zips them across in a sec.

Thanks in advance.

Well you need to understand there is a totally different mechanism behind each. AS is more pull/push while BES is true push. RIM also does much to efficiently package data so it is delivered quick and not using much wireless carrier bandwidth. Granted with most users on an unlimited data plan it's not a big a concern as in the past.

All that being said the way attachments are handled are totally different and I find the BES method much for practical 3G speeds or not. BES agents connect to the user mailbox, convert the attachment and send it to the user. Smaller amounts of data and quicker end user experience. Windows Mobile (and Iphone) basically are downloading the attachment into the email program. WM allows you to define your attachment limit (2mb or less) if you desire as pulling down a 6mb attachment stinks. Apple doesn't have any of the attachment options so hopefully they fix it as they do render native office document types nicely.

At the end of the day I prefer BES due to it performs nicer, the end user experience (strictly talking email / document workflow) is easier. Add to the fact that BES provides you reporting, policy control and you have a hard TCO/ROI to beat as AS is very limited and reporting is a bear of scrapping IIS logs.

FFS - if you're going to spam, at least spam in a language which is commonly used on the board....


Moron.

I have been having internal discussions at my company about this iPhone. This is just another reason (in my opinion) to stick with BES. Security is a huge factor for us as well, but this just adds another nail to the coffin for ActiveSync.

It just seems you are trying to make the iPhone into something it isn't. The Blackberry is a true business class email device while the iPhone is a still quasi-business oriented.

Windows Mobile Exchange > BES