Over on the BlackBerry.com site, Research in Motion recently announced that they, via service providers that currently outsource email systems, are getting into the Hosted BlackBerry Enterprise Server game.
The new software / platform is intended to allow service providers and wireless carries that offer hosted messaging solutions to small and medium sized businesses to offer BlackBerry Enterprise Server in a hosted in environment to these SMBs as well.
Hosted BlackBerry Enterprise Server offers the security and functionality of the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution through a fully outsourced version of BlackBerry Enterprise Server. You don’t need to buy, install or manage server software. Your business can go wireless with no upfront software costs, deployment overhead or ongoing IT support costs.
I think that Hosted BlackBerry Enterprise Servers could be a very big hit for Research in Motion. There are thousands of small business that don’t have their own IT staff to run a dedicated messaging a BES implementation, however rely heavily on email and could benefit greatly from the benefits of Hosted BlackBerry Enterprise Server.
Truth be told, there are already quite a few service providers offering this type of service with standard BlackBerry Enterprise Server, however this new hosted version of BES may take this offering to the next level.
I wonder if those who choose to use RIM as their hosted BES provider will be unknowing BETA testers.