If Research in Motion ships its reinvented BlackBerry devices by April 2013 as currently promised, IT will face a big decision: whether to support the new BlackBerry 10 platform, which requires an entirely new management server than the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) that has been part of IT ships for well over a decade. That’s right, BES won’t manage BlackBerry 10 devices, and RIM won’t upgrade BES to do so. Instead, today’s BES 5.0.3 is the end of the road.
RIM now says it will ship a new mobile management server called BlackBerry Device Service to manage BlackBerry 10 devices. But BDS won’t manage today’s BlackBerrys, nor (for the very few in use) the current BlackBerry PlayBook tablets.
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That means an organization will need to run both BES and BDS servers if they have a mix of BlackBerry devices: BlackBerry 7 and earlier will be managed by BES, and BlackBerry 10 will be managed by BDS.
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