A short while back, in October 2011, I shared an update on a new cloud service that RIM had launched to provide BlackBerry support for Office 365.
To avoid you having to step into the Wayback Machine, here’s that post: Hot Off the Presses: BlackBerry Support for Office 365 in Beta
Well, this morning at 8:00 a.m. Eastern, our friends in Waterloo announced the official launch of their BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365.
Woo-hoo!
So, what does this mean for you?
One may consider this a bit of a cheat, but I’ve decided to just cut and paste from my previous posting on the subject (with some tweaks) what you can/should do now that the service is generally available:
As for your call to action, it’s pretty simple: If you have customers evaluating Office 365 (or Exchange Online) and seeking guidance around how BlackBerry fits into our mobility story, just point them to http://www.blackberry.com/cloudservices to learn more about BBCS.
You can even let them kick the tires (and I encourage you to do the same) by signing up for an Office 365 trial (NOTE: This needs to be an Enterprise Plan Microsoft Office 365 Trial (Plan E3)) and enabling the service under “Setting up email on mobile phones” in the Admin console (see right for a screenshot from my tenant).
It’s really that simple to drive a dialogue with your customers who want both Office 365 and support for their BlackBerry devices.
I’d also recommend you take a look at some of these other links for additional details/conversation starters:
- Update on BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365 via the Office 365 blog
- RIM Launches BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365 courtesy of the Office 365 Technical blog
- Research in Motion (RIM) Launches BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365 in the Office 365 Service Administration wiki
- RIM Launches BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365 in the Office 365 Community Forums
Once again, checkout http://www.blackberry.com/cloudservices for the rest of the details on this new RIM service for Office 365!
Enjoy!
Ian
Group Product Manager
Exchange Partner Marketing
