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Blog Entry
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Metamessage - Emergency Blackberry Communications
Oct 18 2008 8:36AM
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Admit it, if you work in IT then your Blackberry is an essential communications tool. I've been carrying a Blackberry for 8 years now and I'm only too familiar of that stranded feeling of when it’s "not working".
The problem is there are just too many moving parts in the architecture. First there is the Exchange server and we all know how many times that can be the cause. Next there is the Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) and then there is the SQL server where the BES stores its information. Add that to the corporate LAN, internet and firewalls and its amazing that those little black devices ever get email.
The company I work for are currently undergoing a revamp of our Disaster Recovery procedures and we started to look at our Blackberry infrastructure. For the reasons I mention above, it became very clear that it would take a considerable time to recover the Blackberry service as a result of the other systems that Blackberry was dependant on. IN a DR scenario, communication is vital and this prompted us to look at ways to make the Blackberries more resilient.
We didn't have to go far as we were advised by Blackberry themselves to look at Metamessage by a company called Onset. Their software leverages the Blackberry PIN to PIN messaging which bypasses Exchange, BES and the entire corporate network. For the uninitiated, every Blackberry device has a unique identifier and it is these that Metamessage uses to send messages.
The Metamessage server is installed on your network and communicates with your Active Directory and the BES server. You can create distribution lists of any Blackberry enabled account and push these address lists down to specific Blackberry smartphones on a specified schedule. The really cool part is that when new users are added or existing users change their devices, the updates are reflected in the next scheduled push. It’s important to realize that this server is not required for communications, just for pushing the latest changes. There is a client that needs to be installed on the devices that intend to SEND messages, not the ones that want to receive the messages.
In a disaster where the Exchange server, BES or both are affected, the IT department can continue to use their Blackberries to send message blasts out to all Blackberry users or send specific messages to other IT staff. There is also the ability to receive a confirmation that the message was delivered.
The Onset sales staff informed us that PIN to PIN messaging was the only method of communication available during Hurricane Katrina and the September 11th terrorist attacks when voice and data networks where overwhelmed.
What sets Metamessage apart from trying to do this manually yourself or using some of the competitors is the automatic updating and the ability to send a single message to a distribution list. We are initially going to license 20 IT staff which I costing around $6,000 which I think is great value.
My main complaint is the difficulty in setting up the distribution lists and the lists who receive the updates but I’m sure after a little practice it will get easier. It isn’t that intuitive though so get the Sales Engineer to help. There were also initial issues with their client and the newest version of the Blackberry OS we were using however Onset had a new client available within a week. How a company responds to issues like that is usually a good indicator of their quality and Onset came through with flying colors.
So if you are as addicted to your “Crackberry” as my team and I are you may want to consider checking out Metamessage from Onset.
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