Enterprise-Grade « BoxTone Blog — News and Commentary for the Mobile Enterprise Professional

Why Doesn’t Everyone Offer a Money Back Guarantee?

March 3rd, 2010

Most of our leadership team has been in the software industry for 15-20 years now. We’ve seen many different packaging and pricing and licensing models. We’ve seen mainframe to client server to web to mobile applications. We’ve seen perpetual and subscription and SaaS. We’ve seen insourced and outsourced, on-prem and hosted. And we’ve seen many different approaches to mobile management including BlackBerry, iPhone and Android. But one thing we’ve rarely seen is a money back guarantee.

Why is that?

Why is the money back guarantee so rare? Well, it might be lack of tradition. It might be fear of the unknown. Or, it might be the fact that there’s too much “shelf-ware” out there.

What we’ve learned is that if you build software – mobile management in our case — that delivers solid value day-in, day-out and that meets or exceeds customer expectation, the customers stick with you. And as their needs evolve, such as adding more mobile users or expanding mobile platforms or expanding the IT roles that need help, customers work with you to address those too.

Over the past 4 years we’ve built up a base of more than 230 customers managing more than 500,000 devices. That’s quite a base.

More than 78% of those organizations have come back additional times over the years to purchase more software to address their growing needs – hard to miss the explosive growth of mobility.

What’s more, 98% of customers report high satisfaction rates on our regular surveys. We have a ruthless commitment to customer success, and it shows with these kinds of numbers.

But most importantly, 98% of customers continue to renew year-in, year-out. This clearly validates the substantial value they continue to extract from our software. And I cannot remember the last time we’ve ever had a return of first purchase.

Note: Typical tech industry benchmarks show customer sat rates and renewal rates in the 70-85% range; dramatically lower numbers.

With all the challenges of the explosive growth of mobility on so many different vectors, companies and government agencies today clearly need help with managing their smartphone platforms and mobile applications – BlackBerry, iPhone, Google Android, Palm Pre WebOs, Windows Mobile, Nokia and more.

These challenges are big enough that organizations should be able to stay focused on the task and not have to worry about software they buy to manage mobility.

So, building on our first-in-the-industry move last year, BoxTone is extending our BoxTone Money Back Guarantee for all software purchases. We build quality software that continues to deliver high value to our customers. And we stand by it. Period.

So when you look to purchase software, for mobile management or otherwise, ask your vendor for that money back guarantee…

Brian Reed

BoxTone

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Tags: Best Practices, Executive, Management & Monitoring, Predictions
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Mobile Management Predictions for 2015

February 23rd, 2010

I can think of no better way to jump back into Blogging than our announcement today of our predictions for 2010. Apologies that we’ve been quiet for a while… turns out we’ve been very busy finishing out 2009 modeling the future.

Mobile Management Predictions for 2015

Working with our customers from Business and IT Execs to mobile admins and support teams and with our partners, industry pundits, media friends and more, we have crafted our ‘most likely’ view of the enterprise mobility world by 2015.

In this process two things became very clear:

there is a tremendous opportunity to transform the business with Mobility
there is truly a complex mix of Mobility challenges head

So as you work with your organization to mobilize your business, consider a “build to suit” strategy where your mobile IT management capabilities are designed to evolve in lock step with mobile user requirements.

Here’s the Top 5 Predictions for 2010:

Prediction #1: Enterprise-connected mobile device penetration will grow from 10-15 percent today, to upwards of 60-80 percent five years from now! This massive gain in mobilized workforce has employee-owned devices leading the charge.

Prediction #2: Device and mobile delivery platform diversity will continue to expand, with most organizations moving from one mobile platform and a handful of approved devices, to least 2-3 mobile platforms and 15-20 different devices by 2015. Yes this includes BlackBerry, iPhone, Google Android, Palm WebOS, Nokia Symbian, and Windows Mobile/Phone.

Prediction #3: Enterprise mobile applications per user will extend from one critical set of applications – primarily email, PIM and calendaring today – to five critical applications per user by 2015. Key mobile applications include CRM, SFA, ERP and corporate portals as well as unified communications and collaboration.

Prediction #4: Enterprise mobilization strategy will evolve from being focused solely on employee productivity, to one that includes customer engagement. Every business and brand will have to mobilize to engage with their customers.

Prediction #5: Mobile complexity will increase exponentially, placing severe pressure on IT’s ability to deliver high quality service without either a large expansion in mobile support resources or leveraging an automated approach to mobility management.

You can read the full story in our predictions announcement here.

Over the next few weeks we will continue to explore this topic of Mobility Evolution to 2015…

So what do you think of our predictions?
What do you see ahead for yourself and the industry?

Brian C. Reed

BoxTone

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Tags: Best Practices, Enterprise, Mobility, Predictions
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BlackBerry vs. iPhone: The Passion in the Debate Part 1

September 16th, 2009

Like most of you, every morning I read through the flood of inbound and internet-based news, and listen to twitter all day… We’ve all seen that at least once a week, there is a new article or blog written about BlackBerry vs. iPhone.

BlackBerry vs. iPhone Debate Passion Part 1

Yesterday in a hard-hitting piece in CIO.com “Apple Betrays the IPhone’s Business Hopes,” Galen Gruman hit on iPhone’s latest challenges with enterprise, especially around ActiveSync and security policies. This caught my attention got me thinking about the passion that came through in the post.

So I asked myself, “What is it about BlackBerry vs. iPhone that stirs up so much passion in the debate?”

I think the reason for passion is that smartphones are much more than a tool to do our job or make a call; they are personal life companions that fit so many roles. They can evoke almost as much passion as cheering for your favorite football team or choosing a mate. For some they are fashion accessories, for others they are critical job enablers, and for me I could not possibly live without my BlackBerry. period.

Which leads me to the conclusion that there is no right answer in the debate… the answer to which to pick for you and your business is the often used phrase “Well, it depends…”

So, let’s think about some way to organize ourself to answer the “it depends…” questions. Wired.com had an interesting take in their “Great Geek Debates: iPhone vs. BlackBerry.”

The article broke the comparison down into five categories:
1.    Applications
2.    Physical Attributes
3.    Gaming
4.    Personal vs. Business Functionality
5.    The Chuck Norris Factor (yep their idea not mine)

To me, the most important categories in the above list from the enterprise perspective are applications and personal vs. business functionality. Today, I’m going to discuss the first of the two categories, applications. In a future post, I’ll cover personal vs. business functionality.

Applications: I don’t think anyone would argue that the smartphone is the new mobile desktop and it’s now all about the smartphone as an universal application and communication platform.

From CNNMoney.com entitled “Smartphone wars – BlackBerry’s plan to win”, “Apple now boasts some 65,000 choices in its App Store that range from the über-practical to the ultra-absurd. The new BlackBerry app store, by contrast, which launched only in April, offers just 2,000.” But that said, the BlackBerry still has the best implementation by far of the business-oriented mobile killer apps of email, PIM, IM and unified communication… and other such as Reuters, Bloomberg, SalesForce and more.

To me, apps are a matter of form and function. While many enjoy the ability to download an app for virtually everything imaginable, others don’t see the need or practically of having an app for…oh say, steaming up your phone screen by blowing on it app called iSteam.

What matters to the enterprise are the mobile business applications, with two recent standout stories. First was Al Sacco’s life saving story at CIO.com “BlackBerry at D.C. VA Medical Center: Saving Heart-Attack Victims with Handhelds” on life saving strategies. [Note VA uses BoxTone to manage and monitor their devices including those running this lifesaving application at the VA].

Then more on healthcare from Wireless and Mobile News with startling data that 63% of Smartphone Doctors Use iPhone / BlackBerry / Smartphone Medical Apps. The post references the MDsearch.com Smartphone Survey indicating that of the 53% of physicians who are using smartphones, 63% of those are using mobile medical apps.

So here we have it, killer apps (no pun intended) in certain vertical industries and job roles; that’s where the guidelines for answering “Well, it depends…” comes through.

There is no doubt in anyones mind that mobile apps are here to stay. And as BlackBerry and iPhone devices continue to evolve (and more mobile devices/platforms enter the market), the apps will continue to grow in functionality and practicality. What we need more of are great enterprise applications, not more Tetris or screen steaming.

Ultimately, apps alone do not resolve the battle of BlackBerry vs. iPhone, although they will continue to be an ever-growing piece of the argument. And as you might expect, we’re focused on helping make sure the enterprise mobile user gets the best productivity from their mobile platform and apps (by helping IT automate the management at a lower cost).

In a future post, part 2, I’ll discuss the other hot topic from an enterprise perspective in the great debate - personal vs. business functionality.

So what do you think about all this passion in the debate?

Brian C Reed

BoxTone

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Tags: Add new tag, Best Practices, BlackBerry, Enterprise
Posted in Enterprise-Grade, Futures & Predictions, Mobile Applications, Smartphones & Devices | No Comments »

Webinar Recap: Top BlackBerry Management Advice from UK-based Cardiff University

July 28th, 2009

This week we had the pleasure of joining with Mark Hale - Cardiff University’s BlackBerry Technical Services Manager - in on a customer roundtable webinar about BlackBerry support best practices. Their BlackBerry and Lotus Notes go-live were in 2008, along with BoxTone for BlackBerry. They are now using SameTime and, recognizing BlackBerry as a university-critical mobile desktop, plan more mobile apps.

The Cardiff University Story with BlackBerry Management and BoxTone

Mark’s story begins: “As I’ve heard from many others, this was literally case of BlackBerry dropped on the desk… with the ‘can you get this working please?’ This was a double whammy with new Notes mail system at the same time.”

Mark quickly realized he needed professional management software to help. “We needed atop down view of the system from BES to mail to carrier to user device… Needed to farm out certain support elements without having to give full access to BES or in depth training… Having experience with looking at BES logs and time constraints of looking at them with no guarantee of even finding the solution… what I found with BoxTone was proactive step-by-step plain English instructions.”

When speaking of issues that impact daily life, Mark stated: “This is an absolute nightmare trying to remember which log goes with which, and trying to work out where the problem is… The nice thing with BoxTone is it pin-points problem straight away….”

“BoxTone’s kind of become an additional member of the staff with me. I login each morning to the dashboard… and it improves collaboration with the Notes Dominos team”

In terms of making the choice, Mark commented during the webinar roundtable: “I found from documentation was simpler and could implement a lot faster than others… with support found no issues at all with time zone differences.”

“With the BoxTone hand-held console, can get the BoxTone alert and fix remotely… without impact to the social life as it were.” Mark went on: “One major thing that was very useful is the setting and resetting of device password. And could get alerts straightaway [when BES was] looking for a particular location and dive in before the user knew about it… really find that very useful…”

In the discussion of proactive alerting, Mark discussed a great personal story: “I can really keep an eye on VIP users, give them a quick call about their problem, such as recently alerted about a VIP. The gentleman thought things were quiet over the weekend and turns out let his device run down completely and switched off the device and the wireless network and even though plugged in, the device did not get back on network. The gentleman was very thankful and commented would have missed a few key appointments on the Monday if not had the call.”

Perhaps the best thing he remarked: “You can become very proactive rather than reactive.”

Share more of Mark’s experience at Cardiff University by clicking here to run on demand.

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Tags: Best Practices, BlackBerry, Customer Story, Enterprise, Management & Monitoring
Posted in BES, Enterprise-Grade, Messaging Operations, Mobile User Management, Strategy & Best Practices | No Comments »

Top BlackBerry Management Advice from UK-based Cardiff University – Join the Conversation

July 16th, 2009

BlackBerry Management Best Practices Conversation

Back at WES2009 and our BoxTone Annual User Conference in May, Mark Hale - Cardiff University’s BlackBerry Technical Services Manager - joined in on a customer roundtable about BlackBerry support best practices. He had keen observations about dealing with a growing environment in an organization when they have little budget and small staff (like most universities and many organisatons today, they don’t have a lot of money).

Mark’s experiences and recommendations were spot on — so useful and popular that he’s offered to share it again with the rest of us. He has great stories about remotely fixing issues when off campus, proactively addressing VIP issues in real time, and about better collaboration with help desk and messaging teams.

So we’re all set now with a webinar conversation with Mark next week. Come join in the discussion. As a bonus this will be at a great time 11:00am BST for the UK and European crowd. You can register by clicking here.

Brian Reed

BoxTone

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Tags: Best Practices, BlackBerry, Event, Management & Monitoring
Posted in Enterprise-Grade, Messaging Operations, Mobile User Management, SLAs & Service Quality, Service Desk & Support, Strategy & Best Practices | No Comments »

Webinar Recap: Time to Take Control of Wireless BlackBerry Expenses (More than TEM and WEM)

June 8th, 2009

To many organizations, wireless expenses can seem like a black hole. You want all your mobile users getting the most from their devices… and your company wants to get the most for the dollars spent. But can you tell who’s doing what? Do you know where all the costs are? Are you doing everything you can to trim those expenses? Clearly cutting off all BlackBerry use is not the way to go.

BoxTone for BlackBerry TCO ROI WEM TEM

In our experience, lack of detailed visibility, tools and process often gets in the way of reigning in mobile expenses. So, on Wednesday, May 27, BoxTone hosted a webinar with analyst/editor Joanie Wexler – author of Network World’s Wireless in the Enterprise newsletter and The Voice Report’s The Wireless Pulse e-zine – to examine the evolution of WEM and how to optimize TCO.

The webinar – entitled “Time to Take Control of Your BlackBerry Expenses” – looked at how Telecom Expense Management (TEM) is now expanding to Wireless Expense Management (WEM), discussed models for calculating both ROI and TCO for BlackBerry, and then explored 3 approaches for trimming BlackBerry wireless expense.

From an ROI perspective, typically BlackBerry brings 1 hour of additional productivity per user per business day which can compute to be $15,000 or more per mobile user per year, says Ipsos-Reid. Likewise annual TCO can range between $2,100 and $2,500 per user, according to Gartner. So we see great ROI ratios but a cost we all want to trim where we can.

The webinar includes formulas that you can use for calculating your own TCO and ROI. The TCO model suggests $1550 average cost which includes $775 in carrier/external expenses (annual data plans, data roaming, support) and $775 in internal IT Operations expenses (server hw/sw, support, operations, training). Many people only think of the data plans when they think of wireless expenses, and that’s only half the pie.

Jonie reviewed results from Aberdeen Research that calculates effective Wireless Expense Management (WEM) can save enterprises $276 per mobile user each year – about 42 percent off a typical organization’s annual wireless data service plan.

But for large BlackBerry smartphone deployments, effective WEM is almost impossible because responsibility can span multiple departments with no single owner (IT Operations, PC support, and Telcom) and organizations rarely have real-time visibility into actual usage and the tools/processes to manage total cost to serve.

So the webinar details three approaches to reducing TCO:

Tracking actual in-the-field activity for data plan use and roaming
Deploying support automation and user self-service for fewer incidents with lower support costs
Tracking underutilized devices to reallocate or decommission

The cost savings potential is substantial:

Save ~ $77,500 in no-use & low-use device recapture @ 5%
Save ~ $142,500 in IT mobile support costs @ HD
Total hard cost savings of $220,000 per 1000 users (or $220 per user)

You can calculate your own cost savings potential here.

If you’re in telecom procurement, mobile messaging, finance, or head up expense teams responsible for BlackBerry services, this session is one you can’t afford to miss. To view a free replay of “Time to Take Control of Your BlackBerry Expenses,” click here.

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Tags: Best Practices, BlackBerry, Cost Savings, Management & Monitoring
Posted in Enterprise-Grade, Mobile User Management, Strategy & Best Practices, Telecom & Expense | No Comments »

BES v5.0 Part I: What’s New in BlackBerry Enterprise Server version 5.0?

April 20th, 2009

BoxTone for BlackBerry BES 5.0

Back in February, RIM rolled out BlackBerry Enterprise Server version 5.0 to the media and indicated that it would be available in the second quarter. It’s the second quarter and WES2009 is fast approaching, so it’s probably safe to assume it will be out soon. This two-part series will cover the highlights of what we see is most important for those managing, monitoring and supporting the BlackBerry platform: what’s new with BES 5.0 itself and then what’s new with BoxTone for BES 5.0.

So, why should you care about BES 5.0?

The software has been in development for a very long time and it implements many of the suggestions made by BlackBerry customers all over the world. The focus has been to make the BlackBerry environment easier to manage and includes some features that are really going to make a BlackBerry administrator’s life easier. Here are some of the key features recently announced:

A brand new web-based BES administration tool using the BlackBerry Administration Service (BAS). BlackBerry administrators will like this because it means that they will be able to administer the BlackBerry environment from any PC with no additional software required. Don’t miss our next post which will dig more into the new BAS.
More reliable BES infrastructure using the BES High Availability feature of BES 5.0. BlackBerry administrators will be able to configure BES pairs (primary and secondary) where the secondary takes over for the primary if the primary fails – with no interruption of service for mobile users. We’re big fans of monitoring end-to-end user experience and system health, and like RIM’s approach of using ‘heath scores.’
Over the Air (OTA) BlackBerry Device Software upgrades. BlackBerry administrators will be able to upgrade their mobile user’s device software (Operating System and associated files) without having to physically touch the device or trying to get the users to do it themselves. Upgrades can be throttled and set to run off hours too. Of importance is the restriction that only BlackBerry devices running BlackBerry Device Software 4.5 and higher will be able to take advantage of this feature – so there’s a compelling reason now to upgrade your handheld code if you haven’t already.
Dramatic improvement in the BES application deployment process. BlackBerry administrators will be able to deploy BlackBerry applications with a level of flexibility that has never been available before. Now mobile users receive applications through group membership (users can be members of multiple groups) and the apps are deployed from a database rather than a complex folder structure. This feature will help accelerate adoption of enterprise applications for BlackBerry simply because they will at long last be easy to deploy.
Scheduling of IT Tasks. BlackBerry Administrators can now schedule many of the off-hours administrative tasks they normally had to perform by hand. What this means then is that it is very likely that the BES administrator can enjoy even more of their evenings, weekends and holidays.
Enhanced Roles & Permissions. BlackBerry administrators will have finer control over what IT Personnel can administer/affect in the BlackBerry environment. This will allow organizations to segregate administration tasks on a user/group level and will give larger organizations the ability to limit the scope of control assigned to different parts of the IT organization.

Click here to read Part 2 of this series.

For those that want to learn more, here’s a roundup of other online resources for BES 5.0:

So that’s a quick rundown of what’s new in BES 5.0… very exciting indeed! In our next post we’ll highlight what’s new for BoxTone with BES 5.0. We’ll look at how BoxTone software and best practice recommendations can help BES Admin’s simplify and speed their migration to take advantage of all these great new capabilities, fast. And perhaps a sneak peak at some new BoxTone for BES 5.0 technology…

John Wargo, Product Manager

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Tags: Add new tag, BlackBerry, Enterprise, Management & Monitoring
Posted in Enterprise-Grade, Messaging Operations, Mobile Applications, Mobile User Experience, Mobile User Management, SLAs & Service Quality, Security & Compliance, Service Desk & Support, Smartphones & Devices, Strategy & Best Practices | 2 Comments »

Government Best Practices for Hardening the Blackberry Platform

March 24th, 2009

Let’s face it, Government runs on BlackBerry. From top federal officials like the president and the US House of Representatives to state and local agencies, the BlackBerry has become

BoxTone for BlackBerry Management Government Harden the Platform

the indispensible platform for communication 24×7. It’s the platform of choice due to ease of use and years of proven reliability and security. [Yes Security, and once again hackers fail to win the $10k hack the BlackBerry prize says BlackBerryCool.]

BlackBerry use has expanded into virtually every government agency at every level, with some departments or agencies requiring all employees to carry the device. And it is often serving as an extension of the full desktop – capable of supporting mission-critical applica

tions beyond voice and e-mail. That means that means continuity of operations which means hardening the platform for daily and emergency communications.

So a week ago, in concert with Research in Motion and Wallace Wireless , we hosted a webinar – Blackberry in the Public Sector: Best Practices for Hardening your Agencies BB Wireless Platform – that explored how this can be done. And now today we’ve announced a more formal partnership with Wallace Wireless. See Announcement.

Quick highlights of the webinar included tips on how BES Admins can:

Tune the BlackBerry platform before it fails, tune for performance and tune for capacity;
Cut troubleshooting time to just a few minutes;
Shift all those support calls from your messaging team to regional help desks;
Keep everyone connected and communicating in times of crisis and when they are remote; and
Get ready for more mobile apps and services.

Here at BoxTone, we have a unique perspective on how to mange government mobility. Our software is used to manage more than 50,000 devices at all levels of government, including the top three federal agencies. So during the webinar, we specifically discussed how BES admins can benefit from real-time visibility into their mobility system, the importance of tracking deployed applications and controlling IT policy, and hardening the BlackBerry platform to ensure reliable 24×7 performance (using proactive problem management techniques).

To here from the 3 of us and learn more about best practices and technology tools that help mobile government IT Pro’s more effectively do their job, we suggest you run the on-demand replay of our webinar. Click here to run it now. And tell us if you found it useful!

Brian Reed

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Tags: Applications, Best Practices, BlackBerry, Enterprise, Government, Prevention
Posted in Enterprise-Grade, Messaging Operations, Mobile User Management, Security & Compliance, Strategy & Best Practices | No Comments »

Industrial Strength: Expert Client Services and Support for BlackBerry Management Software

March 16th, 2009

BoxTone Client Services for BlackBerry Management

Today we’re wrapping up our three-part series on the “Industrial Strength: Making it Enterprise Grade.” In previous weeks, we’ve explored how enterprise-grade BlackBerry management software should be engineered and what needs to happen to ensure quality across the development and delivery process. Now we’re going to wrap this up by looking at the importance of services and support for enterprise software.

Top-notch engineering and an extensive quality process are meaningless if your software provider doesn’t stand behind its product. In fact, we believe that strong client support can make or break the success a user has with any enterprise software.

Just like we’ve seen in the other posts, there are two key components you want to make sure your software vendor has in place in its client support organization: experienced people and mature processes.

People
We believe that customers deserve an experienced, senior team that can easily answer questions and find solutions to the difficult problems. To do it right, the client services team needs to be well-versed in not only its own software product, but also in any related and dependent software or hardware. Here at BoxTone, each member of our team has more than 10 years of technical experience and a variety of BlackBerry certifications. Their experience runs broad and deep too, with additional certifications in Exchange, Domino, HP, Microsoft, Networking, Database and ITIL.

The combined experience of the team enables them to take holistic view of how our customers are using BoxTone, understanding the challenges they face and taking ownership of the issue through resolution, no matter what the cause or source. Our success with this approach shines through with the consistently positive feedback from our customer surveys:

“Your team is great to work with. They are responsive, understand the issues, and know the BoxTone product (technical/functional) very well. They are people that I can learn from which allows me to better support our BES environment.”

But a client services team should not only react quickly to issues, it also should proactively help you get the most value from the software. For example, when a customer calls with an issue, our client services team will not only address the issue, they also will take the time to do some additional training around the feature or issue so that the customer can make best use of it going forward.

A practical example of this “make best use” approach was the creation of the BoxTone360. Working with a variety of customers, the client services team noticed that many clients were so busy that they did not have the time or the expertise to tune and optimize their BlackBerry environment. So the BoxTone360 was created as a systematic program for BoxTone client service experts to regularly review customer’s long-term performance and health data captured by BoxTone and make specific recommendations on how to optimize that customer’s environment. This leverages both the BoxTone team’s experience and the power of the BoxTone solution while also evaluating the customer’s BlackBerry deployment against industry benchmarks. As we’ve all learned, a well tuned environment means fewer incidents, less distraction and better mobile user satisfaction.

A great client services organization also should be prepared to handle more than just break/fix calls. At BoxTone, we encourage enhancement requests from our customers because those requests often lead to greater innovation in our software, which ultimately benefits all of our customers. Product Management regularly reviews customer and client services enhancement requests. For example, the just-released BoxTone v. 4.0 includes more than 25 customer-requested enhancements.

Processes: The First 30 Days and Beyond
An enterprise software vendor shouldn’t just install your software and leave it up to you to figure out the rest. It should have a client services organization that has the best practices methodology in place to get you up and running quickly, with the appropriate training to make sure your users become proficient with the solution. This focus on “Out of the Gate Success” has been our practice at BoxTone since Day 1. And the results come through in regular surveys showing impressive customer satisfaction and customer renewal rates, which both of which come in at or above 97 percent. In fact, we’re so confident in our initial deployment processes that we recently decided to make it more formal by offering a 30-day guarantee.

In addition, enterprise-grade software vendors should offer multiple ways to interact: live via phone, self-service online case initiation and tracking, self-service online knowledgebase and regular online training sessions. And best-in-class such as BoxTone will have an internal requirement to create and update knowledgebase documents each time a case is opened and closed so that the body of shared knowledge grows quickly.

Three-Part Wrap-up
So now we wrap up this three-part series that we have called “Industrial Strength: Making it Enterprise Grade.” Here we explored the three important pillars for delivering enterprise-grade BlackBerry management and monitoring software that guarantees value to organizations (both large and small) and that stands the test of time. We started with engineering great software. Then we looked at how quality is part of the entire software lifecycle. And finally we looked at the critical role of service and support.

As a buyer of software to support a mission-critical platform like BlackBerry, we feel that should be conscious of what is happening “under the hood” and “behind the scenes” to be sure you’re getting a comprehensive, reliable solution that meets your organization’s needs today and in the future. Be sure to consider these types of issues when you are evaluating and software or services purchase.

We’re proud of our software and services, and we wanted to share with you more about our teams that design, develop, deliver and support them.

From The BoxTone Client Services & Product Management Teams

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Tags: Add new tag, Best Practices, BlackBerry, Enterprise, Management & Monitoring
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Industrial Strength: Ensuring Quality in BlackBerry Management Software

March 9th, 2009

This week we’re continuing our discussion of “Industrial Strength: Making it Enterprise Grade.” In our first post, we talked about what you should know about how your enterprise software is engineered. Today, we’re going to take a closer look at the importance of focusing on quality across the entire development and delivery process. Basically, we’re taking a first-hand look at the question: how do you know if your software vendor is building software to last, providing reliable service and ultimately delivering maximum value?

BoxTone for BlackBerry Enterprise Quality

For some, quality may be as hard to define as great art – you know it when you see it. Nina S. Godbole, author of “Software Quality Assurance: Principles and Practice,” noted in her book. “The term ‘quality’ is one of the most discussed terms, but is often not defined crisply. All practitioners agree that ‘quality’ is a major business factor, a distinguisher that makes the difference, and yet the term is extraordinarily difficult to define precisely. Quality is easy to see and is immediately apparent when encountered or missing!”

We believe there are two key facets that can help define quality in software development and delivery: the processes and the people.

Processes
One of the most important aspects of developing high-quality software is defining processes and establishing checkpoints. These processes span all aspects of software creation from initial market-research of ideas from product management, through inception and coding in development, through quality assurance (QA) in the testing team to alphas, betas and final release with the client services team and customer. Quality is not just a testing function, is not to be rushed, and is not to be taken lightly.

One key facet of our approach is what we call “Fit for Use.” “Fit for Use” is a focus on designing solutions to customer problems based on rich personas and detailed requirements. It helps narrow down the focus to what is most important to the customer and ensures quality of requirements. Thus the quality process starts with requirements that are generated by product management after extensive customer/market feedback based on the “Fit for Use” criteria and is scoped and polished throughout the development process and ultimately tested by QA, client services and customers themselves before final release.

Quality also is about architecture. A brittle architecture breaks frequently and a monolithic architecture is very difficult to maintain and enhance. At BoxTone, we break down our software into subsystems and components, defining clean interfaces between them. We check-in and build our software every day, deploying unit tests and standard regression test suites to ensure the accuracy of every line of code, during which we subscribe to the theory “don’t break the build.” If any of these tests fail in the daily automated build-test, development is halted until corrections are made. And the “breaker of the build” buys everyone “Bagels of Shame” the next day.

But we also go two steps farther: alpha testing and early release. In the alpha stage, we basically eat our own cooking. Our internal team uses the product themselves to run parts of the daily business. Then, the product moves to an early release (ER), where we work closely with a key set of customers in the field to ensure compatibility, quality and acceptance of new features.

Finally, with a focus on continuous improvement through our “retrospective” process, during which we review all data and activities after each release and then further refine the process, learning and improving as we go.

But these processes would be meaningless if it weren’t for the…

…People
Nothing beats experience when it comes to the people a software vendor has in place for designing, building and delivering software. Here at BoxTone, we know first hand the value of having the leadership of senior product managers with a keen focus on customers, an ability to translate customer issues into opportunity and years of software experience. We couple that with a team of senior architects and developers that not only have exceptional knowledge of general software development, but also have specialized skills related to mobility, systems management, application servers, monitoring, databases, OLTP systems and quality. And we augment that with a client services team and pre-sales engineering teams full of veteran BES admins, Exchange admins and Domino admins from companies large and small – so they know what the day-to-day experience is like and therefore bring the customer-first approach to push quality into the entire software lifecycle.

Next week, we’ll be wrapping up this series with what you need to know about enterprise-grade support services…..

From The BoxTone Development & Product Management Teams

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