Scalix Blackberry Enterprise Server Beta

Scalix is on a roll lately! Have just released Scalix 11.4.4 & ActiveSync 1.0, today they announced a beta of Scalix Connect for Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES). Much like Zarafa & Zimbra's BES integration, you can use the Microsoft Exchange version of BES and the BES server won't realize it isn't talking to Exchange. While this makes setuping up BES a little more tricky, it allows a Scalix/BES setup to provide the same level of functionality as Exchange.

http://www.scalix.com/about/news/pressrelease69.php
"Scalix Connect for Blackberry Enterprise Server provides push email, wireless contact, calendar and task synchronization, meeting scheduling, and remote address book/Global Address List lookup. Scalix now offers a full suite of mobility solutions for its Small Business, Enterprise, and Hosting editions: Scalix ActiveSync, Scalix Connect for Blackberry (beta), and Scalix Mobile Web Client. Together they enable Scalix users to communicate via all popular mobile devices without the need for client side installs."

Forum announcement from Florian (Program Management Director)
"It's almost fully functional as well, email, calendar, contacts, tasks - all are there. The missing bits are support for RIM's latest BES version, V5, so you'll have to stick with V4.1 for the time being, and if you run multiple Scalix servers, you'll have to have a separate BES for each of them. Both restrictions will be lifted in the final 1.0 release, this is currently planned for mid/late Q3, and I think we're on track for that."

Scalix Connect for BES Beta 1 Release Notes

I'm famous!

http://www.scalix.com/about/news/pressrelease68.php

“Of all the solutions we tested, only Scalix met all our needs,” said Scalix ActiveSync beta tester Bill Baird, Director of Technology at Phoenix Marketing International. “We looked for an email/calendaring solution that would run on Linux, embrace open standards, have an active online community and offer the following features: Outlook integration including stable offline cache, rich webmail, public folders with mail delivery, and mobile device support. The only missing piece was built-in ActiveSync support – our Windows Mobile and Symbian users had to use IMAP and manually check for new email or set a scheduled sync. I quickly found during the Scalix ActiveSync beta tests how great it is to have push email for these devices!”

Scalix 11.4.4 & Scalix Activesync Released

From early testing, it appears that they have done some optimizations with the Outlook Connector Smartcache (Bug 19785). From the time I click the Outlook icon until my mailbox is synchronized, it was an average of 20 seconds faster than with 11.4.3. (3 tests with each version, averages: 11.4.3: 52 seconds, 11.4.4: 31 seconds)

Windows Desktop Search is not supported for Outlook and appears to work well. (still no Google Desktop support in sight)

The release also marks the release of Scalix Activesync. I'm still waiting to hear back from my sales rep about a new license key, but once I'm up and running I will post about my experience.

11.4.4 Release Notes