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March 12, 2007 12:00 AM

BoxTone's Unique Approach to BlackBerry Monitoring and Management

Windows IT Pro
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Many IT departments are having a difficult time managing the growing number of BlackBerry users in their businesses. Recognizing the need for an automated monitoring and management product that can help IT administrators and Help desk technicians proactively identify and resolve users' BlackBerry problems, BoxTone developed BoxTone for BlackBerry.

     According to Brian Reed, BoxTone's chief marketing officer, a good mobile user management product has to help administrators be proactive as well as reactive, and BlackBerry monitoring and management needs to start at the user level rather than at the infrastructure. In addition to monitoring BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) and other infrastructure components like other BlackBerry management products do, BoxTone for BlackBerry monitors the path of every single email message sent to users' devices. By collecting data about delivery times, hung threads, BES-to-mail-server connectivity, and usage, BoxTone for BlackBerry can recognize patterns, identify trends, and alert administrators and Help desk employees to developing problems before they affect users.

     When BoxTone for BlackBerry detects a problem, it sends alerts to administrators' PCs and mobile devices describing which users are having problems, whether the problem is inside or outside the firewall, and how to fix the problem. "IT groups want to know one thing fast: 'Is this my responsibility? And if not, then who should I call?'" said Joel Weinshank, BoxTone's director of marketing. If an alert points to a problem outside the firewall, administrators immediately know that's where the problem lies and can work with Research In Motion or the service provider to resolve the difficulty without delay.

     BoxTone for BlackBerry's reactive approach includes a unique module that provides Help desk employees with diagnostic tools and intelligent recommendations that they can use to quickly and efficiently respond to users' problems. BoxTone's screens and dashboards also include these intelligent recommendations. For more information about BoxTone for BlackBerry, go to http://www.boxtone.com.

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Comments
  • tgray04
    5 years ago
    Mar 13, 2007

    I was so pleased to see this article about Boxtone that I had to stop and write a comment. We use Boxtone to manage our BlackBerry community. At present, we have about 2500 BlackBerry devices deployed and only have three people supporting them all. Boxtone has enabled us to keep an eye on our entire BlackBerry infrastructure and know about issues before our users do.

    We were tired of getting phone calls from our Executives stating they had not received messages on their devices the last hour or half hour, etc. Since the software available through RIM would not provide us the type of results we desperately needed, our CIO pressed us hard to find some kind of utility that would provide real time notifications of issues so we would know about them before our users (especially the Execs) did. Boxtone was recommended to us by both RIM and our primary Carrier, and they were greatly superior to all other alert tools we considered.

    Of course, Boxtone does not prevent issues from happening - we still have to deal with continuous issues from RIM, our infrastructure and the carriers, but because Boxtone is able to pinpoint where issues are most likely occurring, we are able to resolve them much faster than before. Its ability to provide alert notification of potential issues is a godsend - I can breath easier knowing there is a resource keeping a watchful eye for me so I no longer have to be tied to the BES.

    Our BlackBerry devices have become a critical part of our company, and Boxtone allows us to keep everything running smoothly. I would say something like, "I don't know how we got along without it," but the truth is, we weren't getting along at all until we started using Boxtone.

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