WES2009 and the co-located BoxTone Annual User Conference were a smash hit last week. There was so much news and information packed into the event, that we’ll have a number of posts this week to give you all the highlights. We’ll start at the top with some quick WES2009 highlights.
BoxTone for BlackBerry @ WES2009
First the fast stats: About 4,500 people descended on Orlando, Fla., to share the latest in the BlackBerry Community. WES 2009 included 120 sessions in five tracks, in addition to training and certification sessions. There also were more than 125 vendor sponsors and 20 media. And there was no swine flu (a.k.a ‘hamthrax’).
The opening night reception was a full house ’sweat-fest’, with thousands of attendees connecting with peers and checking out RIM and the vendors.
In general sessions on Tuesday, RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis highlighted BES 5.0 and the BlackBerry AppStore innovations. Mike said, the 12,000 Research In Motion employees are already running on this “most tested ever” BlackBerry Enterprise Server platform. Great detail in posts from CrackBerry with mp3 playback and IntoMobile with live-blogging play by play).
In general sessions on Wednesday, RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie announced winners of the Wireless Leadership Awards: US Courts, HSBC and Ricoh/Mirifex. And Malcolm Gladwell entertained and stretched our minds. BlackBerryCool posted a full rundown.
Of particular interest to you may be the 37 sessions in the Mobile Architecture and Administration track. These included “what’s new,“ ”how to” and case studies covering topics such as BES 5.0, performance tuning, high availability, system administration, security, advanced troubleshooting and support.
A couple of sessions worth mention:
- “The New BlackBerry Enterprise Server version 5.0 – More Control, More Management, More Peace of Mind” featured a 90-minute overview of everything in BES 5.0 with Peter Walker and Jeff Holleran of RIM. We’ve posted on BES 5.0 features already including a second post on practical best practices for BES 5.0 migration.
- “BlackBerry Enterprise Server Administration – New Flexibility & Power Unveiled” included the official launch of the BlackBerry Administration Service (including a new BAS Plug-in capability) with Ken Schneider and Michele Boland of RIM and BoxTone’s own Mitch Berk. Mitch demoed the world’s first BAS Plug-in with BoxTone, showing BoxTone monitoring dashboard data in the BAS screens and then how, using BAS APIs, BoxTone could remotely load-balance a complex deployment. This session was so popular that it was run a second time on Wednesday. More about that in a future post.
- “Customer Panel: Cutting Costs While Improving Performance: How Citi and The Home Depot Prevent Service Issues, Simplify Support and Fix Incidents Faster” – This panel included in-depth case studies, recommended best practices and audience discussion with Bill Monks of Citi and Michael Lott of The Home Depot, who are both running major BlackBerry deployments and are avid users of BoxTone software and services. Again, more on that in a future post.
- “Customer Panel: Go Big, With a Plan: Managing Large-scale, Global Deployments” – This panel discussion included two Henkel team members, Philipp Mischke and Mario Micudaj, discussing their large scale enterprise experiences and best practice recommendations, including the use of BoxTone to help achieve their goals.
- And last but certainly not least, an exciting interactive panel “Bloggers Predictions for BlackBerry Futures” from top BlackBerry Bloggers. Stay tuned for the video.
This overview only scratches the surface about WES2009….stay tuned for more throughout the week.
Tags: Best Practices, BlackBerry, Event, Management & Monitoring, Mobility
