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RIM demonstrate new Blackberry Enterprise Server 5.0
On May 26 at the Cumberland Hotel in London BAPCO Journal attended an event hosted by Research in Motion (RIM) explaining how its new Enterprise Server is providing a range of benefits to a range of customers, including emergency service customers.
To underline this Chief Fire Officer Stephen Hunter and IT and Communications Manager Gary Bellfield from Tayside Fire & Rescue spoke about their experiences using the BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0 and how it is providing operational and efficiency benefits to the brigade with its enhanced security and manageability.
The session started with Alan Panezic, Vice President of Platform Product Management at RIM, giving a brief overview of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0 and how the solution has been upgraded to offer further features and benefits to both IT managers and users. For example, the new system offers the ability for IT managers to remotely manage applications on the devices, easily customise user permissions and deploy up to 450 policies - including a number of security focused options - on each device.
Demonstration – user groups and managing functions remotely
After this, a number of BlackBerry smartphones were handed around and a demonstration was given to show how straightforward it was for IT managers to install, manage, group, sub-group and track their BlackBerry smartphone deployment. As was noted, for some organisations there can be over 100,000 devices in the field that have to be managed by a small ICT department. As such, anything that can make the management more straightforward, intuitive and user-friendly is a massive benefit. The enhanced ability to control devices using BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0 was then demonstrated by remotely disabling the camera function on the BlackBerry smartphones and then switching it back on. The high availability function of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0 was also shown. This ensures the devices remain online if there is a problem with the first server – instantly moving the hosting across to a second server – without the users being aware of any problems or changes. This provides the required resilience that all customers, but especially those in the emergency services, require.
Tayside Fire & Rescue
Chief Fire Officer, Stephen Hunter explained the challenges facing Tayside Fire & Rescue. With 400,000 people to serve, based over a 7,000 kilometre square region in very disparate rural and environments, it’s vital the brigade does all it can to improve efficiencies with its mobile communication and information infrastructures.
Furthermore with a number of retained staff based at various locations, having the ability to contact them through a range of channels offers far more efficient communication, and can help save valuable time. One example that CFO Hunter gave was that of pagers. Prior to the roll out of BlackBerry smartphones, staff used a pager which told them to contact HQ to learn of an incident. Now though, using BlackBerry smartphones and working with RIM, Tayside Fire & Rescue has installed an application that works as a pager, requiring the user to actively stop a sounding alarm and send an email about the incident, which saves vital time as the user does not need to contact the control centre to learn of the incident.
Benefits for ICT staff and users
Additionally with a number of staff now tasked with undertaking roles such as home visits to assess fire risks – part of the drive to prevent fires from happening in the first place – the BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0 is able to receive data sent from digital pens that the officer uses on digital paper. This allows the information to be recorded as if it was written on a traditional form, which is then sent electronically to the database. This means that staff don’t need to go back to their station to update files, and instead can spend more time in the field carrying out assessments – helping Tayside reach it’s target of 10,000 home visits by the end of the year.
Gary Bellfield, the ICT and Communications manager for Tayside Fire & Rescue, then spoke about some more aspects of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0, with specific emphasis on the ICT side. Firstly Bellfield outlined how easy the entire update to the BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0 had been, which allowed devices to be updated remotely without requiring them to be returned to the IT offices. With ICT budgets already quite small, and with cuts a strong possibility in the current economic climate, technology needs to work harder for its money, and help save money where possible. Therefore, allowing staff to spend more time out doing their job, rather than heading into the station to update files – as with the risk assessment forms that can be updated electronically – provides additional benefits and gets more from the technology.
The final element of the BlackBerry solution is that, by using GPS technology on the devices, call centre staff can see where a fire officer is located and if the officer is not near the site of an incident, can be ignored for another that is closer – helping save valuable time. In the past, control centre staff would have contacted someone based on their assumed location, only to find they were not there, and this would waste time. However, now Tayside can ensure it is phoning the nearest possible person to an incident.
