[greg42]

Hi all,

One of my clients is planning to host his 3 mailboxes with Exchange Online. The problems are :
1/ located in France, the beta zone is not officially available to him.
2/ I'm not keen on using a beta software for professional use: what is the stability of that product ? And if needed, would RIM provide us with support if not in the beta zone ?

So my questions: has anyone used BBCS so far ? outside the beta zone ?

Thanks for your feedback.

Christian

[knottyrope]

1) might be your biggest issue.

2) if you can get past 1) then maybe but not if they cant support you.

[greg42]

OK, eventually my client will be hosted by a third party company providing BB sync with its own BES servers.

Regarding BBCS in general, anyone been using it in the beta zone ?

[ifonline]

I was on BlackBerry Cloud Service for a few weeks, and in that time I experienced multiple activation issues. Tech support was very slow to respond, although they did make an effort to help. The Microsoft Office service (which includes Exchange Online) is a fantastic suite of hosted products, and I will be moving the office to them in January (when the BBCS leaves beta). But as far as BBCS goes, I had to pull the plug for now. It's a beta product and should not be used in a mission critical environment.

One thing to note: if anyone wants to try the BBCS, you must have an enterprise level plan with Office 365. The minimum plans that qualify are either Office 365 E1 or Exchange Online Plan 1. Any plans below those levels will not support BBCS. I know from experience.

I will say this: the level of control given to the end user (Administrator) for both Office 365 and BBCS is incredible. I had significantly more control over Exchange and the BlackBerry with Office 365 than I do with a traditional hosted Exchange provider. Really amazing. The BBCS is a "mini" BES complete with policy administration (although a limited set of the policies available in the full BES solution).