BlackBerry use
has ballooned within companies of all sizes, but with the influx of
devices come management difficulties and more problems to
troubleshoot and resolve.
This week, Zenprise, maker of diagnostic software for Microsoft
Exchange and BlackBerry environments, released the latest update of
its BlackBerry troubleshooting tool, Zenprise 3.1.
According to Ahmed Datoo, Zenprise's vice president of
marketing, the latest release builds on the vendor's February
release and dives deeper into what is causing BlackBerry device and
server performance problems. Through a set of real-time dashboards,
mobile and BlackBerry managers can review and report on everything
from sent and received messages and
message latency to pending messages, users, carriers and which
Exchange server is feeding the email.
The software also integrates problem signature files from
BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) Ltd.'s knowledgebase to
provide users with step-by-step problem-resolution instructions.
The software can troubleshoot more than 5,500 problems across the
BlackBerry infrastructure, ultimately yielding faster mean time to
repair and improved end-user service levels.
Interactions among users, BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES),
Exchange, Active Directory, networks and other systems can often
break down and result in
downtime, which affects productivity, IT and the budget. Recent
statistics from Osterman Research show that troubleshooting
user-related problems and Exchange/BES interactions accounts for
almost 80% of time spent managing BES.
"Downtime is a significant expense for any company," said
Osterman Research principal Michael Osterman; he added that
management tools that "can resolve downtime incidents quickly are
an important addition to any BlackBerry environment."
Osterman's research also found that downtime levels in
BlackBerry environments vary greatly. According to the recent
Osterman survey, 14% of organizations reported that they experience
no downtime in their BlackBerry infrastructures during a typical
month, while 34% reported up to 15 minutes of downtime a month.
Twenty-one percent reported 16 to 30 minutes of downtime a month,
and 17% reported 31 minutes to an hour of downtime in the same time
period. Roughly one in eight organizations reported more than one
hour of BlackBerry-related downtime in a typical month.
"Based on averages calculated from the survey results, we found
that the typical organization experiences a mean of 29 minutes of
downtime per month in [its] BlackBerry environment," Osterman
wrote.
BlackBerry downtime can be a serious matter, according to
Osterman, especially because most BlackBerry users maintain a high
profile within a company.
"Downtime for the president of a company or the salesforce is
more serious than downtime for clerical staff," he said.
Zenprise, Osterman said, can help IT staff see what's happening
in the BlackBerry environment and provide information to be
proactive about staving off future trouble.
"It's basically like the dashboard of a car," he said. "It shows
the state of where the network is and where it's been in the past.
It provides more intelligence for IT to know how better to manage
the [BlackBerry] environment."
Zenprise 3.1 uses algorithms to pinpoint root causes in
BlackBerry and Exchange environments and offers instructions to fix
the problems uncovered.
Datoo said Zenprise monitors and troubleshoots the BlackBerry
environment, reducing the volume of alerts received when problems
arise. The software captures a holistic view of the environment
that affects the BlackBerry system and, along with monitoring BES,
checks carrier availability, Active Directory health, RIM SRP
availability, WAN/LAN performance, and overall Exchange health.
Jayaram Bhat, Zenprise's CEO, said administrators are overloaded
and overburdened with projects and often rely on the help desk to
resolve user problems.
"When an employee can't be productive away from the office
because their BlackBerry isn't working, they want quick answers
from their IT department," Bhat said, adding that the
dashboard-based Zenprise tool gives anyone from help desk to a BES
administrator the information to solve problems quickly.
Version 3.1 features:
- User dashboards to detect user issues.
- VIP dashboards for IT to monitor a company's critical
users.
- An end-to-end view of BlackBerry infrastructure problems,
including detection of problems within carrier networks, RIM SRP
networks, domain controllers, global catalog servers, BES servers,
SQL servers, front- and back-end Exchange servers, Bridgehead
servers, and the LAN and WAN.
- Monitoring of hung MAPI threads.
- Detection of mail delivery issues to end users' devices.
- Problem signature files from the RIM knowledgebase and Zenprise
experts to troubleshoot more than 5,500 problems across the
BlackBerry infrastructure.
- New reporting capabilities such as BlackBerry capacity
planning; SLA reports; Exchange mail store capacity planning; mail
performance reports, which show average delivery times within an
Exchange routing group, across a routing group, to the Internet and
to a BlackBerry device; the most and least active BlackBerry users;
the most and least active Exchange users; and the top 25 inbound
and outbound SMTP domains.
"If you can have a solution to help you manage whatever mobile
infrastructure you have, it's going to help alleviate a lot of
problems," Osterman said. "The ultimate goal is to have more
intelligence into how to manage the network, allowing organizations
to be more proactive."
Mike Ruman, enterprise messaging manager at Grant Thornton,
agreed. He said monitoring a BlackBerry environment can be a big
job, and tools to help ease that burden are particularly
useful.
"Email, both mobile and desktop, is the most critical
application for our staff," Ruman said in a statement. "Monitoring
the BlackBerry Enterprise Server is a huge task. Zenprise for
BlackBerry enables us to proactively provide high levels of service
to our BlackBerry users who need always-on access to their email
and calendar."