by Al Sacco

RIM to End BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) 4.1 Support This Summer

Opinion
Mar 29, 2011
MobileSmall and Medium Business

Organizations running BES v4.1 for Exchange or Domino will no longer see official support from RIM after July 2, 2011.

BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) has reportedly announced a summer 2011 date on which it will end official support for its BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) v4.1 for Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Domino.

BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) Diagram
BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) Diagram

As of July 2, 2011, RIM will no longer support BES 4.1.6 or BES 4.1.7 for Exchange or Domino, though the software will continue to function, according to CrackBerry.com. The news apparently does not apply to Novell GroupWise users running either BES 4.1.6 or 4.1.7

The affected versions of BES are relatively old at this point—RIM is expected to release BES 5.0.3 any day now and it reportedly ceased selling BES 4.1.x last July. But organizations with BES 4.1.x for Exchange or Domino should consider upgrading before the end of support date, as RIM will no longer provide official support or updates to address security-related or other performance issues.

In related news, RIM recently announced a brand new, free hosted version of BES.

AS

via CrackBerry.com

Al Sacco covers Mobile and Wireless for CIO.com. Follow Al on Twitter @ASacco. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline and on Facebook. Email Al at asacco@cio.com