 | Customer: | Blueprint Management Systems |
| Solution: | A hosted BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) solution for Blueprint’s small team of specialised data consultants, working for clients across the UK and the world |
| Benefits: | Cost-effective, reliable connectivity to each other and to corporate email, calendars and address books |
"We initially looked into hosting the BlackBerry Enterprise Server ourselves, but the outlay, infrastructure and resource it required was prohibitive. Blue Sky said they could handle it for us affordably and with no hassle. We didn’t believe it could be that easy. It was – and their service has proved consistently reliable and affordable ever since."
- Mike Hayman, IT Director, Blueprint
Situation
Blueprint specialises in the creation of business intelligence, performance management and budgeting and financial planning systems, helping clients from global legal and financial firms to county councils harness and make full use of their valuable company data.
To do this, the Blueprint consultants have to immerse themselves in their clients’ businesses, often spending weeks at a time there instead of at their own desks.
To make this remote working efficient for Blueprint, each of the 10 consultants needs to have constant and reliable access to their desktops and corporate network facilities, including corporate email, calendars and addresses, via their BlackBerrys.
BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) is commonly used by larger companies with many consultants, as dictated by economies of scale. For smaller teams this level of BlackBerry functionality has historically proved prohibitively expensive, as companies need to provide their own dedicated IT infrastructure and support.
Solution
Blue Sky was the first hosting company in Europe to pilot a shared BlackBerry hosting service and have been offering this service to large and small companies since 2005 with great success.
What makes our service different is that we provide hosted BlackBerry solutions to groups as small as five users, allowing them to have full BES functionality for a very competitive monthly fee.
We do this by using your existing Lotus Domino or Microsoft Exchange email service (whether it’s hosted by us or on your own servers) and providing a shared server service to connect your BlackBerrys in one of our protected, fully redundant datacentres.
As we already hosted Blueprint’s Lotus Domino email service in our facilities, it was an easy solution to set up shared BlackBerry hosting that allows their consultants constant, reliable access to both their email and corporate networks 24/7 – wherever in the world they happen to be working.
Results
Running the hosted BES service from our datacentres means that Blueprint consultants experience a guaranteed level of service round the clock. Adding new users, or removing consultants who have left the company, is as simple as sending us an email.
Our shared per-user-per-month service is a cost-effective option for Blueprint – we manage and maintain their systems to agreed service levels, leaving their internal IT resource free to focus on other areas of the business.
Download the Blueprint Case Study as a PDF