[Good_Guy]

Originally Posted by strobate

FWIW, my employer tested BES and went with Good and Treos as standard devices. I'm not entirely sure why, although business relationships rather than technological soundness certainly could have been an influence.

I fear as RIM that if RIM were to add features (multimedia, etc.) BB's advantage (stability, strength at email) over Win/Palm devices will diminish . . .

Nice little back-handed dig there.

I agree with you regarding RIM's fear. However, the consumer is the driving force behinf what a company does as it relates to their product. If enough users demand SD storage or camera, etc., RIM will have to accede to their wishes. Otherwise, they become stagnant in the marketplace. I think RIM will, eventually, do something along those lines. RIM did not get to where they are today by being a stupid company. They can only ignore their customers for so long.

[Berry One]

I doubt it (free BES) will support more than 15.

It was an arbitrary decision to limit by 15. Why not by 10? Why not by 12? Same person or group inside RIM could make a decision to give away BES that supports 150 accounts. You may doubt it as much as you want, but once software free there is no way back.

Being that our business is software and we have no hardware revenues to fall back on, we can't give away our product.

Yes, you can. Two words: CALs and support contracts. OK, three words.

You should learn from Microsoft and from OpenSource how one can give away free software, not having hardware revenues to fall back on.

[Berry One]

Originally Posted by Good_Guy

RIM did not get to where they are today by being a stupid company. They can only ignore their customers for so long.

30% increase in hardware sales is a proof they do not ignore their customers at all.

[Good_Guy]

Originally Posted by Berry One

It was an arbitrary decision to limit by 15. Why not by 10? Why not by 12? Same person or group inside RIM could make a decision to give away BES that supports 150 accounts. You may doubt it as much as you want, but once software free there is no way back.

If it is free and will remain as such, why put a user number on it at all and why give it a price? Secondly, why make people pay for BES at all if it is all about CAL's and support revenue?

Yes, you can. Two words: CALs and support contracts. OK, three words.

You should learn from Microsoft and from OpenSource how one can give away free software, not having hardware revenues to fall back on.

Support contracts have an inherit cost with them which means lower margins. In RIM's case, they have always been a hardware company, so it is easy to NOW give away a limited version of their application. I don't disagree it is nice marketing plan for right now. I am of the opinion it won't last that long and that it will end before you see Good giving away GL.

Tell me a piece of software that MSFT gives away. Don't say IE as that was a long time ago and a different time. MFSP is a feature that was built into Exchange 2003 in order to get people upgrade, i.e. pay. Also, we have 3 products (GL, GMD and GMI) that are marketed. How many products does MSFT have that people pay for?

[Good_Guy]

Originally Posted by Berry One

30% increase in hardware sales is a proof they do not ignore their customers at all.

How long was it between the 7100 and the 8700? What technological advances did the 8700 make? I am not asking that sarcastically, but being that I have held one once and don't use it, what user advantages did the 8700 bring that other devices didn't/don't have?

Also, where are you getting 30% increase in hardware sales? If you are basing that off of the last quarter, the introduction of the 8700 caused an uptick in those numbers. How many devices were sold to new (what I read as growth) customers and not existing customers upgrading? Since the quarter over quarter growth in subs has decreased, I dare say a good deal of those hardware sales were to existing customers. That being said, there is not a thing wrong with that sales model and shows incredible loyalty to the brand, which has never been questioned. My question is what can they do to make their next model different and better to keep those customers buying the devices? The new free server will bring new customers, though they will be smaller businesses that may not see the advantage of upgrading to the latest and greatest unless there are some major feature upgrades.

Bottom line, this space is in such an infancy stage right now that trying to predict where it will be a year from now, nevermind beyond that, is a crap shoot at best. Will make a helluva business school case study, though.

[Berry One]

Originally Posted by Good_Guy

In RIM's case, they have always been a hardware company, so it is easy to NOW give away a limited version of their application. I don't disagree it is nice marketing plan for right now. I am of the opinion it won't last that long and that it will end before you see Good giving away GL.

Why would not it?

While Good.com proudly announces a single company moving 1,000+ Treos to GoodLink, hundreds of IT people worldwide download and install free BES.

It seem to be a logical development of RIM's marketing plan. When RIM didn't have viable competition, they just gave devices to CEOs to play with. CEO ruled, and IT obeyed just because there wasn't choice.

These days CEOs know that choice exists. To choose, they will ask their IT for a feedback. Not many IT folks I know would bother to install and mess with 1 month trial version of whatever. GoodLink will be in disadvantage, just because people don't try it, not because of its merits.

May be not free GL, may be not truly unlimited, but I can predict that before the end of this year Good.com will proudly announce an annual trial of GL, or 16 seats trial GL with unlimited trial, or 6 month trial GL with easy extendable trial period.

Anything to offset RIM's gains, and to compete with Microsoft and OpenSource.

Good.com will have to learn to live on lower margins. The time of multithousand dollars BES or GL servers is gone.

Customers will be coming to Good.com and demanding GL offer to match BES offer. Why not? What Good.com will have for an answer? Just 'no' and freshly printed marketing materials?

I can bet Good.com is not stupid to get itself cornered to bankrupcy just because RIM now offers 15 seats BES for free, Microsoft offers its Exchange add-on for free, and OpenSource is just free.

Time for Good.com to make a right move.

[radimus]

Originally Posted by Good_Guy

How long was it between the 7100 and the 8700? What technological advances did the 8700 make? I am not asking that sarcastically, but being that I have held one once and don't use it, what user advantages did the 8700 bring that other devices didn't/don't have?

It was at least six months between the release of the 7100 and the 8700. Probably more like a year.

From what I see the 8700 unifies the phone interface across the line. Now the phone-centric and mail-centric models are matched in this respect. Also, it brings modern horsepower to the Blackberry. Prior to the 8700, most Blackberries had little memory and slow CPU's. They were basically pre-ARM Palm Pilots sans touchscreen with keyboards and GPRS radios, technologically speaking. With the 8700 they are using a device that is roughly in the same class as modern Treos and PPC phones, hardware wise, and has enough memory to do more that just run the Blackberry OS.

Something else I think the 8700 does is it brings RIM into a place where they can start thinking about devices with multimedia capabilities and other potentials. While Microsoft and others get their footing and come up to speed they have a window of time where they can find out how to integrate cameras, storage cards, etc into the devices and still retain the ability to properly secure the data and device. That window is short too. As least as fast as Microsoft is concerned they learn fast from their mistakes and will have most all of the problems and serious bugs in MSFP 1.0 ironed out by MSFP 3.0.

[radimus]

Originally Posted by Good_Guy

GMD is security for the entire handheld. GoodLink is inherently secure. GMD allows for that security to be placed for the entire device.

Pardon me if I'm speaking out of ignorance here, but how can you make that claim when what you essentially have is an application running on what is an inherently insecure OS? Yes, your application has the ability to allow centralized control of the entire handheld, but as long as the underliying OS is open this control could conceivably be interrupted or intercepted by a variety of methods.

I'm not trying to pick a fight here. I'm actually curious about this.

[Good_Guy]

Originally Posted by Berry One

Why would not it?

While Good.com proudly announces a single company moving 1,000+ Treos to GoodLink, hundreds of IT people worldwide download and install free BES.

Except for the fact that 100's of people downloading free BES equals a maximum of 15 users per server. So whereas Good announces 2,000 new users at a single company, that is a single instance of a paying customer versus a maximum of 1,500 users at those 100 free BES users.

It seem to be a logical development of RIM's marketing plan. When RIM didn't have viable competition, they just gave devices to CEOs to play with. CEO ruled, and IT obeyed just because there wasn't choice.

These days CEOs know that choice exists. To choose, they will ask their IT for a feedback. Not many IT folks I know would bother to install and mess with 1 month trial version of whatever. GoodLink will be in disadvantage, just because people don't try it, not because of its merits.

I beg to differ. We have always offered a 30-day free trial and it has been quite effective and not a disadvantage at all. IT folks have absolutely no issue installing GoodLink and trying it and very few need the full 30-days to determine the viability and effectiveness of the solution. This is the same with BES. Usually, they know within 2 business weeks. Has never been an issue and I personally have had very few (less than 5%) that need an extension of the 30-day trial.

May be not free GL, may be not truly unlimited, but I can predict that before the end of this year Good.com will proudly announce an annual trial of GL, or 16 seats trial GL with unlimited trial, or 6 month trial GL with easy extendable trial period.

Again, RIM has offered free servers through the carriers many times and we countered that offer once, last fall, for a month and realized it wasn't necessary. I personally take the free server as a compliment, not only to Good, but to the other applications in the space. Why all of a sudden make something free that people gladly paid for in the past? Not saying desperation, however, it does seem a bit 'convenient' given the increased competitive nature of RIM's core business. As I have said, I can't say I diasgree with the move as the SMB space has been woefully left out of most email providers portfolio. Good has always said that we are an enterprise space and while I don't see a free server promotion in offing, I do see a foray of some type into the SMB space in the future.
[/quote]

Good.com will have to learn to live on lower margins. The time of multithousand dollars BES or GL servers is gone.

Don't know where you are getting your information from, but a GL server is a one-time cost of $1,500. The CAL's are were the money comes, as you said.

Customers will be coming to Good.com and demanding GL offer to match BES offer. Why not? What Good.com will have for an answer? Just 'no' and freshly printed marketing materials?

Customers have asked in the past and we have said 'no'.

I can bet Good.com is not stupid to get itself cornered to bankrupcy just because RIM now offers 15 seats BES for free, Microsoft offers its Exchange add-on for free, and OpenSource is just free.

Time for Good.com to make a right move.

LOL! Bankruptcy? Not even close. RIM offering BES and 15 seats free is targeting a market segment that we have never gone after in the first place. Free BES is an enticement to sell devices, which is the backbone of RIM's business. Being that we are not in the hardware business, it truly doesn't apply. Let Palm, Motorola, HP, and Nokia have that battle, which you can be sure they will.

[Good_Guy]

Originally Posted by radimus

Pardon me if I'm speaking out of ignorance here, but how can you make that claim when what you essentially have is an application running on what is an inherently insecure OS? Yes, your application has the ability to allow centralized control of the entire handheld, but as long as the underliying OS is open this control could conceivably be interrupted or intercepted by a variety of methods.

I'm not trying to pick a fight here. I'm actually curious about this.

Fair question. How do you mean the Palm OS is inherently unsecure? With Good Mobile Defense and Good Mobile Intranet, you can force any and all traffic flowing to and from the device to travel over our secure transport, therefore, interception or interruption is not an issue. By using GMD to disable the default browser on the browser and forcing all web traffic through GMI, all of an organizations proxy and firewall rules are applied to web browsing. GMD allows the encryption of any and all applications/data stores on the device using AES-256. GMD also allows forced encryption of anything on the SD card as well. Combined with the ability to remotely erase the SD card as well as the device (which GoodLink provides), GMD gives an amazing amount of security to the device and anything running on the device.

[arche3]

what I would like to try is "goodlink" on my 8700c. that would be a great test!!!! My wife uses a treo 650 good'ed for her work. I really like the office-outlook like interface. would love to try it on a blackberry.

Originally Posted by Good_Guy

Fair question. How do you mean the Palm OS is inherently unsecure? With Good Mobile Defense and Good Mobile Intranet, you can force any and all traffic flowing to and from the device to travel over our secure transport, therefore, interception or interruption is not an issue. By using GMD to disable the default browser on the browser and forcing all web traffic through GMI, all of an organizations proxy and firewall rules are applied to web browsing. GMD allows the encryption of any and all applications/data stores on the device using AES-256. GMD also allows forced encryption of anything on the SD card as well. Combined with the ability to remotely erase the SD card as well as the device (which GoodLink provides), GMD gives an amazing amount of security to the device and anything running on the device.

[radimus]

Originally Posted by arche3

what I would like to try is "goodlink" on my 8700c. that would be a great test!!!! My wife uses a treo 650 good'ed for her work. I really like the office-outlook like interface. would love to try it on a blackberry.

You can. It's called DynoPlex eWorks. You can download a time-limited trial version. I tinkered with it and found an Outlook-style interface to be both cumbersome and redundant on a Blackberry. The Outlook-style interface works great in point & click land, but in the realm of the jog dial I think it's an awful way to get things done. I found it more efficient to call up Messages, Address Book, Calendar, etc and switch between them with Alt-Esc.

[radimus]

Originally Posted by Good_Guy

Fair question. How do you mean the Palm OS is inherently unsecure? With Good Mobile Defense and Good Mobile Intranet, you can force any and all traffic flowing to and from the device to travel over our secure transport, therefore, interception or interruption is not an issue. By using GMD to disable the default browser on the browser and forcing all web traffic through GMI, all of an organizations proxy and firewall rules are applied to web browsing. GMD allows the encryption of any and all applications/data stores on the device using AES-256. GMD also allows forced encryption of anything on the SD card as well. Combined with the ability to remotely erase the SD card as well as the device (which GoodLink provides), GMD gives an amazing amount of security to the device and anything running on the device.

What I mean is that these PDA OS's, PalmOS or WinMobile, are inherently insecure because they were designed as open systems where the user has full rights. By open I mean that just about anyone can get their hands on the SDK's which pretty much laiy the whole thing wide open for them. Just like Windows 98 was and default installs of XP where the single user is a local admin. While you state that you can secure the internet data traffic in and out of the device, is that just through the normal channels or could another app that is install sidestep Good and create its own connection? What is done about sync attacks, Bluejacking attacks, WiFi attacks, etc that do not route through the normal GPRS wireless data path? Encryption is a good thing, but as some point that data needs to be decrypted and how do you secure it then?

While it's true that these attacks are not widespread now, I suspect one day they will be as PPC phones get popular. Especially since all the black hats and script kiddies like to pick on Microsoft, and Microsoft PPC OS follows a form and convention that is not unlike that on a PC.

[Good_Guy]

Originally Posted by radimus

What I mean is that these PDA OS's, PalmOS or WinMobile, are inherently insecure because they were designed as open systems where the user has full rights. By open I mean that just about anyone can get their hands on the SDK's which pretty much laiy the whole thing wide open for them. Just like Windows 98 was and default installs of XP where the single user is a local admin. While you state that you can secure the internet data traffic in and out of the device, is that just through the normal channels or could another app that is install sidestep Good and create its own connection? What is done about sync attacks, Bluejacking attacks, WiFi attacks, etc that do not route through the normal GPRS wireless data path? Encryption is a good thing, but as some point that data needs to be decrypted and how do you secure it then?

Disable wifi, bluetooth, IR, etc. As for allowing SDK, you can blacklist any application you don't want running and/or disable cable syncing so that the only way data is transferred to the phone is via the wireless path.


While it's true that these attacks are not widespread now, I suspect one day they will be as PPC phones get popular. Especially since all the black hats and script kiddies like to pick on Microsoft, and Microsoft PPC OS follows a form and convention that is not unlike that on a PC.[/QUOTE]

[Berry One]

Customers have asked (Good.com) in the past (to match RIM's offer) and we have said 'no'.

Good.com did not get to where they are today by being a stupid company. They can only ignore their customers for so long.

LOL! Bankruptcy? Not even close.

Keep saying 'no' to your customers and your LOL will end on sour note.

[Good_Guy]

Obviously, we differ in our opinion of this. We had a free server promotion for one month to match the RIM offer and we sold more than we gave away. For our core customer base, the price of the server is not an issue. People want free, sure, but when we present our solution vs the BB solution, we let the solution speak and don't sell on price. We win some deals, we lose some deals, but I can personally say that I have not lost a deal based on the fact that we would not give away our server and I don't foresee that changing.

[gonavyblue]

Originally Posted by Good_Guy

If it will remain free, why did they give it a price of $1,099? Secondly, RIM's hardware margins are starting to decline. Remember, they are in the market to make money.

Good question. The hardware margins can be expanded by shifting production offshore, no?

[Good_Guy]

Originally Posted by gonavyblue

Good question. The hardware margins can be expanded by shifting production offshore, no?

Possible, but then questions of quality and manufacture control come into play. RIM likes to have 100% control over their product, which is why they have developed to quality product they now have. Shift it offshore, less corporate control.

[gonavyblue]

Originally Posted by Good_Guy

Possible, but then questions of quality and manufacture control come into play. RIM likes to have 100% control over their product, which is why they have developed to quality product they now have. Shift it offshore, less corporate control.

But don't they already manufacture in some east european country in a semi-out sourcing model. The parts come from all over the world. The quality is still pretty good, is it not?

[strobate]

Uh, Boeing is manufacturing the wings for the 7E7 entirely offshore. Do you think they'll be of inferior quality? I doubt it.

BBs are manufactured to RIM's specs. That can be done anywhere.