Exchange 2010 Supports BlackBerry Enterprise Server

There are no less than three updates that IT administrators will have to deploy, but the refreshes in question make the latest iteration of Exchange Server and BlackBerry Enterprise Server play nice together. As of the past week, BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) is fully supported on Exchange Server 2010, revealed Paul Bowden, exchange release manager. This, of course, means that BlackBerry Technical Support Services are also available to customers.

In order to start leveraging full support, IT admins will have to implement the following updates: Roll-Up 1 (RU1) for Exchange Server 2010, MAPI v6.5.8147 and BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0.1 Maintenance Release 1 (MR1). Microsoft and Research In Motion have partnered and worked closely together in order to make sure that customers running both Exchange Server and BlackBerry Enterprise Server in their environments will be able to enjoy support as soon as possible.

“This is the earliest customers have been able to deploy BlackBerry smartphones with a new Exchange release - ever. Customers who rely on BES as an important part of their messaging and collaboration infrastructure have told us that more rapid support for RIM's solution is critical to them. So we partnered with RIM earlier in the development cycle to ensure organizations moving to the new release experience no user downtime,” Bowden stated.

Customers will certainly be able to download both BlackBerry Enterprise Server v5.0 Service Pack 1 and Maintenance Release 1 from BlackBerry. “All three of these updates are available to customers of Exchange Server 2010 and BlackBerry Enterprise Server v.5.0 with Service Pack 1 at no cost,” Bowden added. In addition to the latest service packs and maintenance releases, customers running BlackBerry Enterprise Server, can also grab BlackBerry Enterprise Server Resource Kit, BlackBerry MDS Services, BlackBerry MDS Runtime and BlackBerry Mobile Voice System.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 is available for download here.