Black Berry Enterprise Server - BPS and BES Express

BPS and BES Express

As of 2010, RIM is offering the Blackberry Enterprise Server Express edition with no user limitations - for free. It has a few minor feature limitations, but only requires a data plan - not a BES plan. It enables near-instant seamless mail and calendar integration with your existing exchange server (incoming emails often appear on the Blackberry handset before they appear in the Outlook or OWA clients), which is an advantage over the existing Outlook Web Access model that the Blackberry Internet Service offers.The free download requires a license code, which may be delayed due to demand.

As of January 2007, RIM is offering a free version of BES called BlackBerry Professional Software, which is a free download from the BlackBerry website and includes 1 user license. BPSE provides a "...wireless communications and collaboration solution designed specifically for small and medium-sized businesses." It comes with one CAL (Client Access License) - meaning one BlackBerry handheld can be activated on the Server, and you can add up to 29 additional CALs (for a total of 30) or upgrade to BlackBerry Enterprise Server at any time.It's only available for Notes and Exchange environments. BPS is based on the 4.1 code, but with a more simplified management tool, and a limited amount of patches are being released. (BPS is "stuck" at v 4.1.4, where full BES is at 4.1.6 plus maintenance Releases). As such BPS is missing out on some functions that full BES did get from SP6 onwards, such as rich content email, free/busy search, remote search.

Blackberry Professional Software - originally called Blackberry Enterprise Server Express - first appeared with version 4. There was BES (full), and BES Express (same as full, but no cost, limited maximum number of clients, and 1 CAL included free), they then renamed BES Express to BPS, but it was still the same thing, and then later they introduced BES Express 5, which is rather different to the previous BES Express and BPS primarily because it allows non-BES devices/subscribers to have a "full-fat" Blackberry experience which is finally cost/feature competitive with Exchange ActiveSync devices, i.e. provides full synchronisation of read/unread status, deletions, mail subfolders (including sent items), contacts, and calendar, all without license costs and without the requirement of an expensive and sometimes extremely difficult to acquire BES tariff. (For example Orange in the UK may make it difficult to supply BES package/provisioning to less than 10 handsets at a time, and other operators often have extreme difficulty applying the BES package to handsets/subscribers that were originally BIS supplied.)

For GroupWise RIM offered Blackberry Enterprise Server. As of 2011 version 5.0 is available.