Office Mobility Blog

DataViz to demo Documents To Go for BlackBerry and give away a Nintendo Wii!

Next week in Orlando (May 13th-16th), IT managers, CIO's and BES admins from around the world will be gathering for the 2008 Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES). Touted as 'The Biggest BlackBerry Conference of the Year', attendees will learn a variety of ways to leverage their wireless investments to make sure they are getting the best possible return. You'll even get a chance to have some fun networking at the Welcome Reception and watching Grammy winner John Mayer perform Tuesday night!

If you're attending WES, be sure to stop by booth #236 in the Solutions Showcase to get a first look at the new Documents To Go for BlackBerry. Along with getting a glimpse into one of the most highly anticipated BlackBerry applications in years, one lucky visitor will also win a Nintendo Wii just for stopping by!

In addition to participating in the Solutions Showcase, DataViz will be giving a 15-minute Demo Theatre presentation of Documents To Go on Tuesday May 13th at 3PM in the Crystal Ballroom (Room G1).

There's sure to be a lot of exciting news coming out of this event next week. Be sure to attend if you can!

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Including Free/Busy Lookup and Improved Attachment Support

A Blackberry Enterprise Server upgrade (4.1 SP5) was officially released by RIM a few days ago. This upgrade includes some much anticipated features such as free/busy calendar look-up and also added attachment support (downloading and editing of native email attachments).

It's important to note that some of these features will also require updated BlackBerry Device Software 4.5 (no official word at this point on when Device Software 4.5 will be available).

As far as Documents To Go is concerned, this is an important update as we will be providing support to edit native documents and email attachments on your BlackBerry. We know you've all been waiting patiently for Documents To Go to be available. This release is a big step in the right direction. More info should be available in the near future. Thanks to all of you for your patience, we promise Documents To Go for BlackBerry will be worth the wait! Make sure you're signed up for our BlackBerry announcement list so you'll know as soon as its available.

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A recent press release out of Waterloo is proof that Research In Motion (RIM) is doing just fine in these difficult financial times. RIM’s fourth quarter profit for fiscal 2008 reached $1.88 billion, more than doubling fourth quarter numbers from fiscal 2007.

Along with this huge profit increase, RIM also added a net of 2.18 million new BlackBerry subscribers.

With bright spots like the OS 4.5 update right around the corner and the upcoming availability of Documents To Go for Office file and email attachment editing, Jim Balsillie (CEO, Research In Motion) doesn’t seem to think this growth will slow anytime soon:

"Looking forward, the prospects for RIM and the industry are more exciting than ever and we will continue to work closely with a thriving ecosystem of partners to build on our momentum during the year ahead."

RIM Press Release

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For those of you who are patiently waiting for Documents To Go to be available for your BlackBerry, we thought we'd take a moment to give you a taste of what its going to look like. Here are a few screenshots:

Continue reading "Documents To Go for BlackBerry - Screenshots!" »

Posted by Jason Coup at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Including integration with Documents To Go!

Last May DataViz attended the Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES) and announced our intention to bring our Documents To Go application to RIM’s BlackBerry handhelds. Since that time, thousands have flocked to our sign up list to make sure they’re among the first to know when it’s ready.

Fast forward to today; Documents To Go is still in development for BlackBerry and many want to know why it’s not yet available. As mentioned on our website, the project is taking longer than we originally expected. There are a few reasons for this, not the least of which is the fact that BlackBerry devices are currently not equipped to allow native downloading and editing of Office files.

However, that will change very soon as RIM announced some scheduled performance enhancements for their BlackBerry enterprise platform. These enhancements include HTML email support, remote search, new instant messaging features, and integration with Documents To Go! To take advantage of these enhancements, you will need an update for your BlackBerry Enterprise Server (version 4.1.5) as well as an OS update for your BlackBerry smartphone (version 4.5)

Our goal has been to provide the BlackBerry community with an attachment viewer and editor that is on par with our solutions for other handheld platforms like Palm and Windows Mobile. This integration will allow us to do just that by providing a way to view and edit Office attachments natively on your BlackBerry smartphone.

RIM says these features will be available later this year. If you want to get a sneak peek at the new/improved features, RIM is showing them off at Lotusphere in Orlando (booth #516).

Stay tuned for more updates throughout the coming weeks and make sure you’re signed up with our BlackBerry announcement list so you can stay up to date with everything DataViz has planned for your BlackBerry!

Read the press release.

Posted by Jason Coup at 08:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

It started with Palm. Then came Symbian UIQ (2 & 3) and Series 80. After that, it was on to Windows Mobile Smartphones. Today, DataViz announced its next home for Documents To Go: BlackBerry.

Documents To Go will bring native support for Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint to BlackBerry, along with InTact Technology to ensure complex formatting will be maintained during the transfer of files. The announcement comes from the Wireless Enterprise Symposium in Orlando, FL. Documents To Go for BlackBerry is expected to be available later this year.

"The BlackBerry solution attracts a broad range of mobile customers who can benefit from the ability to work with native Microsoft Office files. Documents To Go from DataViz will provide another degree of mobile flexibility and productivity to BlackBerry customers and we are very pleased that this software is becoming available to our growing customer base." - Jeff McDowell, VP of Global Alliances, Research In Motion.

If you’re as anxious as I am to get your hands on this as soon as it releases, you can sign up to be notified when its available. I’ll post some more in-depth info about this soon!

Posted by Jason Coup at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (1)

RIM’s enterprise dominance comes to an end

A recent article by Dale Vile suggests that, when thinking about the future of mobile email for their company, the number of large enterprises choosing Microsoft’s Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) Technology is nearly equal to the number choosing RIMs Blackberry solutions.

What’s more, when you examine the article’s data in regards to smaller businesses, EAS pulls ahead and creates a fairly large gap between itself and RIM. In fact, the data shows that companies under 250 employees are (when thinking about the future) more likely to choose EAS over RIM by nearly 3 to 1!

As the article says, it’s important to remember not to think of this survey in terms of devices. It’s easy to equate EAS with Windows Mobile; RIM Blackberry with, well, Blackberry handhelds; and Other with Symbian, Java, etc. The technology discussed in this article, in most cases, is not tied specifically to the handset you are using. Blackberry Connect has made it possible to use Blackberry services on a variety of devices, and applications like RoadSync bring the EAS technology to many different devices outside of the Windows Mobile world. I think the key takeaway from this article is simply that the race for mobile email dominance is clearly not a one man race anymore. Microsoft has a pretty good track record in situations like this, so it should be very interesting to see how RIM handles the challenge.

Posted by Jason Coup at 03:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

MSN Money: - RIM's stock jumps 16 pct on BlackBerry deal

The reports are coming in now predicting doom and gloom for Palm and other phone manufacturers and email software providers now that RIM and NTP have settled. While this is certainly good news for BlackBerry and for software innovation in general, RIM finds itself facing a new challenge and competitors. And instead of fighting the battle in the courtroom, these opponents will be coming after them in the marketplace with great and innovative products and solutions.

Continue reading "BlackBerry settlement doesn't mean an automatic win or an end to increased pressure and competition" »

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