RIM announces SMB management solution

Picture a BlackBerry user and what do you see? A suit-and-tie sort of guy, possibly an exec, who is undoubtedly the employee of a Fortune 500 company. While that profile might be spot on at the moment, RIM is hoping that the next few years will see more overall-wearing produce store owners and small-town real estate brokers hopping on the BlackBerry bandwagon as well.

To that end, the Canadian company has announced BlackBerry Professional Software, an integrated management suite designed from the ground up for small and medium-sized businesses. BlackBerry Professional is meant to be a SMB counterpart the RIM's enterprise-sized BlackBerry Enterprise Server and is intended to be fully-scalable; you can even easily upgrade to BlackBerry Enterprise Server if your business grows beyond 30 mobile employees. BlackBerry Professional provides SMB admins with a set of easy-to-use tools--including wizards, installation and configuration applets--for managing policy, security and custom applications for a mobile fleet. Best of all, it doesn't require a separate server like RIM's enterprise-class solution: BlackBerry Professional Software can be installed directly on your email server. "The SMB market is a very large market that sees the value of mobility even more than the large enterprises do," Alan Panezic, RIM's Vice President of product software management, told DailyTechRag last week. "They're really just looking for core functionality--what they're telling us is 'let us grow with the solution.'" BlackBerry Professional Software is available now; the five user bundle goes for $499 while the 10 user bundle will set you back $849.

For more on BlackBerry Professional Software:
- see this press release