Do any of you currently have applications deployed into your BlackBerry infrastructure?

Do you rely on purchasing third-party applications for your solutions or do you develop the mobile versions in-house?

Do you use MDS Integration Service and MDS Studio or do you use BlackBerry JDE?

Do you use the .NET or Eclipse plugins?

Do you have a mobilization review requirement for all in-house developed applications?

Is mobilization a huge part of the development life cycle for core business applications and other intranet applications?

I think it's still a legitimate statement that a good majority of BlackBerry deployments don't take advantage of the MDS Services platform (MDS Connection Service and MDS Integration Service). During the economic crisis we're currently in, I have heard that a number of deployments have cut back on the number of devices they have installed as a means of cutting costs. The other side of the house would say that we should get more from the device and truly unlock the power it has by default (e.g. - developing mobile interfaces to interact with core business applications), as opposed to simply cutting device deployments and service contracts (obviously the carriers and RIM favor this choice). I'm just curious who has matured enough within the mobile application platforms to have already started on development and mobilization of applications for the BlackBerry.

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BCSA (4.1, 5.0) | BCSD (4.1, 5.0)

The views expressed by me on Port3101.org are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

I think mobile application development really is the future of the industry. I think we are moving away from the current design of everyone has a computer and the high level people have a BlackBerry, and moving to more of a model that everone has a BlackBerry, and only high level people have computers.

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MCSA 2003 +M MCITP | EMA
Who cares, RIM will just change how they do Cert's again

Do any of you currently have applications deployed into your BlackBerry infrastructure?

Deployed:

Bloomberg
Agility (G2X)
Pyxis extended Siebel dashboard

In Progress:

Mobilizing different internal / external portals some customer facing
Exploring applications that can be extended via Pyxis
Exploring Chalk for use for communication / learning for both push and on demand
Mobility strategy to look out 2-3 years and plan for new application demand, infrastructure etc

Do you rely on purchasing third-party applications for your solutions or do you develop the mobile versions in-house? Both. Heavy Java / .net development inhouse but no one with mobile skill set for development. Still no thought around application / website refresh if there is a mobile component. We want it to be part of the plan in the beginning vs. after thought.

Do you use MDS Integration Service and MDS Studio or do you use BlackBerry JDE? Nothing at the moment.

Do you use the .NET or Eclipse plugins? Yes, starting to. We have had Blackberry / carrier events showing the current toolset and what is possible meetings with business and developer areas.

Do you have a mobilization review requirement for all in-house developed applications? TBD

Is mobilization a huge part of the development life cycle for core business applications and other intranet applications? TBD

I'd love to discuss this with a small group at WES. It's likely going to consume me the rest of the year / 2010 as we form our strategy. Lot of discussion on forming a mobility department that does all things around this sector and being a "one stop" for business areas wanting anything related to mobility (as long as it's not an iPhone).

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We don't have any mobile apps deployed. There are some apps available via our company intranet that some users access via their device, but there was nothing done to deploy or customize for those--they just go to the URL same as they would on a PC. A majority of the apps used by our remote employees are accessed via intranet, so this may be the closest we get to deploying apps.
I think there are definite benefits to it, but it just doesn't apply to us.