A service pack is now available for BlackBerry® Mobile Voice System (MVS) 5.2 that expands PBX interoperability to include Siemens Enterprise Communications HiPath 4000 v6, in addition to existing support for Cisco, Mitel and Avaya PBX’s. The release also supports ITU-T E.164, the international public telecommunication numbering plan, as well as coordinated the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) time standard.

A cost effective approach to mobile call recording, BlackBerry MVS integrates with leading third party call recording platforms and provides IT administrators the ability to configure BlackBerry smartphones used to route mobile calls made for business purposes through the corporate phone system, allowing conversations to be captured and archived for future reference.

BlackBerry MVS can help organizations comply with government regulations such as the FSA policy 10/17 (UK) to record calls associated with financial transactions and the Dodd-Frank Act (US) for trading records by logging call detail records of mobile calls in UTC time standard.

Learn About the Benefits of BlackBerry MVS

BlackBerry MVS is designed to increase the productivity of the ever-growing mobile workforce by unifying mobile and desk phone features. It provides users with one business phone number, one caller ID, and one voicemail box that is easily accessed from home, work, or on the go.

• Helps organizations comply with government or regulatory compliance
• Logs call detail records in UTC format and integrates with leading third-party call recording platforms
• Can reduce overall telephony costs
• BlackBerry MVS supports the use of voice over Wi-Fi®, so organizations can reduce their overall mobile telecommunication costs
• Improves productivity
• MVS is designed to improve productivity by reducing the time employees spend checking voicemail and returning calls, and with only one number to reach you, lets workers respond to customers faster
• Provides greater reliability in poor or congested data coverage areas
• BlackBerry MVS helps users by taking or placing calls through an organization’s PBX when mobile data coverage is poor or does not exist

Customers who have deployed BlackBerry MVS

Learn more about customers that have deployed BlackBerry MVS to achieve regulatory compliance and realize significant saving on mobile calls, including Nomura International PLC and Bank am Bellevue.

Companies have experienced significant cost reduction and increased productivity with BlackBerry MVS. Leclerc Scarmor, a leading French retail network with over 530 independent distributors operating over 600 stores across Europe, successfully integrated BlackBerry MVS into their business continuity plan. With BlackBerry MVS, they decreased mobile phone costs as outgoing BlackBerry calls made on site route over the company’s Wi-Fi network to the PBX, which means that these calls are charged at landline rates rather than mobile rates. Read the full story here.

Learn More about BlackBerry MVS & Achieving Regulatory Compliance

Looking to learn more about achieving regulatory compliance? Check out:

• Webinar: “Banking on BlackBerry: Achieving Regulatory Compliance”
• Learn how BlackBerry UCC (Unified Communications and Collaboration ) helps financial services organizations stay productive and collaborative on their BlackBerry smartphones, while achieving regulatory compliance
• Guide to Call Recording with BlackBerry Smartphones
• Understand Call Recording For Regulatory Compliance and Risk Management, including where mobile communications fit, what it means for CIOs, and what mobile recording options are available

BlackBerry MVS is available globally. To learn more about BlackBerry MVS and how to get it, visit www.blackberry.com/mvs

How has your organization approached regulatory compliance and call recording? What are some of the challenges that you’ve encountered? Share in the comments below.

BlackBerry MVS is just one solution that makes up our Unified Communications & Collaboration (UCC) portfolio. To find out more on how BlackBerry addresses the Content Management, Voice Conferencing, and Enterprise Instant Messaging needs of an increasing mobile workforce, check out the interview below.

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

How have BlackBerry products improved your productivity and helped you get things done when collaborating with other co-workers, customers, and partners? Share in the comments below.

We’re buried in email — it’s the simple truth. Many organizations and individuals default to email as the primary mode of communication, and it’s seen as the “work” channel. You might use text messages, instant messaging, and social media in your personal life, but “work email” is a familiar phrase and is used to describe how we get things done in the office. But technology has moved far beyond this, and what we should be doing is efficiently utilizing the appropriate modes of communication within our professional lives to reach the desired outcome with the lowest amount of effort, server load, and time. Utilizing your organization’s investment in mobility and collaboration technology can go a long way to solving this issue.

If I’m not watching my inbox like a hawk, I don’t feel like I’m working. If I leave my inbox unsupervised for even a short amount of time during the day, I feel like I’m neglecting my responsibilities. The other day I heard it referred to as “watching your inbox closer than you watch your kids”, and it hit home. The amount of time that we waste (yes, waste) checking, sending, and receiving email is astronomical. This doesn’t just strain your personal efficiency; it can also have implications on your company’s mail servers, particularly if you’re a heavy user of large attachments such as presentations.

Speaking of using attachments, this is a particular aspect of the issue that I see time and time again – individuals and teams mistakenly using email as a tool for workflow: reviewing, approving, and firing attachments of different document versions all over the place. This is not what it was meant to be! There are a ton of fantastic alternatives for managing communications and workflow. Let’s take a look at a few scenarios and solutions that can help to break apart how we communicate so that we can engage effectively.

Use the phone

Particularly with younger generations (of which I am a part), this is often not the go-to method of communication even concerning quick questions. Sending it in an email gives you the feeling that you can strike it off of your to-do list. But really, you can’t – not until you get an answer. All it does is add to the clutter and open up the potential for it to get lost either on your plate or on the plate of the individual you’re reaching out to. Mind you, hitting someone’s voicemail isn’t always the best thing either – and that’s why I love BlackBerry® Mobile Voice System for allowing me to be reached at a single number whether I’m using my desk phone or BlackBerry smartphone.

Enterprise instant messaging

I’ve come to love this over the past few months. Many organizations have enterprise instant messaging implemented internally, and even better, hooked into an employee directory. Even if I’ve never met or spoken with an individual before, I’ll often shoot over a quick IM if it’s something that can be resolved with a “yes”, “no”, or simple response. This way, even if they’re on a call, they can often multitask to give me what I need quickly, without leaving a trail of messages all over the place. These solutions often include file sharing or again, in the case of BlackBerry Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) solutions, you can one-click to start a call from an instant messaging conversation. Better yet, you can take your internal IM solution mobile on your BlackBerry smartphone by utilizing these solutions. Quick questions and quick answers follow me wherever I go, without causing pile-up in my inbox.

Centralize document storage and management

Instead of emailing documents as attachments, loading down mail servers, and running the risk of confusing versions, it’s important to centralize document storage and management. Does your organization have a solution for this? Is it mobile-friendly, and feature-rich? Microsoft® SharePoint® is an example of one that fits the bill for many companies. With the BlackBerry Client for Microsoft SharePoint, you’re able to download documents, open and edit them with Documents To Go®, and send them back up into SharePoint with full version control. The BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet browser is also a fantastic vehicle for accessing internal web apps, whether connected via Wi-Fi® or through BlackBerry® Bridge™ on your smartphone for true mobility.

BlackBerry Messenger for business

BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) isn’t just for organizing weekend BBQs with friends; it’s also a fantastic tool for mobile communication on work topics. Organizing colleagues and teams into BBM groups can help keep things clean in your contact list, and you can even send files and voice notes up to 6MB. If you don’t have access to mobile enterprise instant messaging, this is a great way to get in touch with your coworkers quickly and efficiently. Knowing when someone has received and read your message allows you to operate and communicate confidently on this platform. We use it constantly here at RIM® (I’d hope so!) and I’ve certainly felt the benefits of having quick and simplified access to everyone on my team.

Third party apps

There are a ton of collaboration and communication apps available in the BlackBerry App World™ storefront, including cross-platform apps. Figure out what works best for your particular style of work, and based on the pain points in your current communication structure, and go wild trying some of these out. Cloud storage solutions are great examples of available apps that can help make your life easier at work, especially for small businesses.

Bonus: Easy scheduling across organizations, and one-click conference calls

Worth mentioning in this type of post are Tungle.me and BlackBerry Mobile Conferencing. Tungle allows you to share your availability, and view the basic availability of others, regardless of what platform you’re using and whether or not you’re in the same organization. This is great for sales teams in particular who are working to set up appointments with external contacts. With BlackBerry Mobile Conferencing, you can save multiple conference profiles on your BlackBerry smartphone and never worry about adding in your conference details to an invite, or having to input them by hand when you’re an attendee. Just hit “Join Now” and you’re off!

The point is that there are so many more modes of communication available outside of email. Email should be used effectively and certainly holds a foundational purpose in our collaboration, but the myriad of available apps, instant messaging solutions, document management, and workflow tools shouldn’t be ignored. I’m willing to bet that you could shave off hours from your workweek by engaging in thoughtful and efficient communication in your workplace.

To find out more about BlackBerry communication and collaboration solutions, head over to www.blackberry.com/collaboration. Specifically, take a peek at the BlackBerry Client for Microsoft SharePoint, BlackBerry Mobile Voice System, and BlackBerry Mobile Conferencing.

How do you manage workflows and collaboration while on the go? What are your favorite tools, apps, or solutions? Share in the comments below.

Many organizations operate under unique regulations, particularly in the financial industry. It’s important to implement technology, tools, and systems with embedded solutions that enable you to meet these standards and requirements. To help you with this, we’ve published our second “CIO’s Guide” – this time on call recording with BlackBerry® smartphones in order to help manage risk and comply with regulations. Specifically, BlackBerry® Mobile Voice System™ (MVS) is highlighted as a solution designed to meet these needs, with a kicker of increasing productivity and cutting down on costs with features like a unified call experience across networks and Wi-Fi®.

In this guide, you’ll find:

• Call Recording for Regulatory Compliance and Risk Management
• Where do mobile communications fit?
• What does it mean for CIO’s?
• What are my mobile call recording options?
• MVS Only – Secure and Reliable BlackBerry Call Recording
• How it works
• Benefits of the BlackBerry MVS approach for call recording
• Useful Links

Check out the guide embedded below, and hosted on our BlackBerry SlideShare channel.

What are your business’s regulatory requirements? How have you used technology and mobility to help meet these needs and stay efficient? Share in the comments below.

The BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900/9930, BlackBerry® Torch™ 9810, and BlackBerry Torch 9850 smartphones are now supported by MVS 5.1, which allows businesses to extend their phone system to their mobile workforce. By enabling “Voice over Wi-Fi®” or “Voice over Mobile” calling on the leading business phone systems from Cisco®, Mitel, and Avaya®, BlackBerry MVS was designed to extend the functionality and capability of a desk phone to a BlackBerry® smartphone virtually anywhere in the world. Now employees can be reached in the office or on the road through a single phone number, reducing the likelihood of missed calls. Even when a call is routed to voicemail, end users will have a single voicemail account to manage. Calls can be routed securely over Wi-Fi when available, in order to help reduce a company’s overall telecom costs. Lastly, the handoff is automatic – calls are seamlessly transferred between Wi-Fi and mobile networks without interruption. (You can learn more about BlackBerry MVS from our previous blog post on the launch of version 5.1.)

New expanded support for the AudioCodes Mediant 3000 VoIP gateway allows businesses that operate the Avaya® Communication Manager and Nortel® Communication Server phone systems to take advantage of BlackBerry MVS. In addition to supporting the AudioCodes Mediant 1000 and 2000 series VoIP gateways, BlackBerry MVS also supports the Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Mitel® Communications Director phone systems. Designed to encompass most widely used VoIP and phone systems, BlackBerry MVS has your business covered.

BlackBerry MVS 5.1 is just one component of RIM’s Unified Communications & Collaboration portfolio, joining BlackBerry® Mobile Conferencing, BlackBerry® Client for Microsoft® SharePoint®, BlackBerry® Chalk™ Pushcast™ Software, and BlackBerry Enterprise Instant Messaging in providing a comprehensive suite of voice and collaboration solutions that are managed through the BlackBerry® Enterprise Server platform.

We’re excited about the new support for AudioCodes® and BlackBerry 7 OS devices, as well as wider availability. BlackBerry MVS is now available through Research In Motion® (RIM®) distribution partners in over 25 countries including the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Australia and Mexico. To learn more about BlackBerry MVS features or to contact a reseller, head over to www.blackberry.com/mvs.

Question: How often do you miss calls to your desk phone in any given week, and how could BlackBerry MVS help you? Share in the comments below.

BlackBerry® Mobile Voice System (MVS) 5.1 with voice over Wi-Fi® calling is now available for Avaya in North America, in addition to the existing North American Cisco® and Mitel® functionality to support BlackBerry MVS. BlackBerry MVS is available to the UK through the Cisco® platform. This connection system allows calls to be transferred between networks, further enhancing employee connectivity. For details, check out www.blackberry.com/mvs.

What is BlackBerry Mobile Voice System?

BlackBerry MVS provides the opportunity for unique cost savings by unifying the broad array of voice hardware into single handheld devices. Full control of the connection – as well as managing incoming and outgoing calls – rests with the company, and comes complete with a variety of options and settings for administrators. BlackBerry MVS was designed to: boost productivity, enable IT groups to manage calls, allow employees to remain easily connected to the organization without the need for a desk phone, and to deliver overall value through increased mobility and connectivity.

So What’s the Benefit?

Beyond conceptualizing the idea of unifying mobile communications and managing voice packets with ease, there are tangible bottom-line benefits to MVS. For example, consider the cost savings of voice plans once a percentage of your company’s calls are routed via WiFi. Concerning hardware, consider how much an average desk phone costs, and imagine the savings of cutting this expense time and time again. Lastly, picture a new employee that has less to learn due to less hardware and more unified systems, saving you the cost of time and increasing the speed at which he or she begins to contribute productively. Clearly the positive impact of MVS extends beyond the full list of features, beyond the supporting concepts and industry trends, and spreads throughout your organization in a surprising number of ways.

Real World Example

An example of BlackBerry MVS finding success in application can be found in LTT Vending Group, one of the UK’s leading independently-owned vending machine company. LTT Vending Group implemented BlackBerry MVS to further enhance their existing BlackBerry® solution, increasing phone and customer relationship management efficiency, as well as company image. Because the implementation of BlackBerry MVS unified all employee voice communications to one phone number each, the availability of employees increased and the customer experience was simplified. In cost savings alone, LTT Vending predicts that the solution will provide a 50% cost savings on their communications bills in just over a year, which would provide a full return on the investment.

Learn More

To learn more about BlackBerry MVS 5.1, head over to www.blackberry.com/mvs, and to explore the details of the mentioned example, view the LTT Vending Group (UK) Case Study.

Share Your Thoughts

Are control, organization, and simplicity just as important for your phone as they are for your email? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

In this BlackBerry World™ video, Jonathan Wong (Product Manager, Research In Motion®) provides an interactive walkthrough of the mobile office concept. He discusses how existing peripherals such as monitors, keyboards, and a mouse can be leveraged by a BlackBerry® smartphone and/or a BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet to provide a full-featured suite of productivity. He also touches on the BlackBerry® Mobile Voice System (MVS), Presenter Mode (available with the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet), and several other useful features.

How would using a more mobile office positively affect your productivity and mobility? Tell us in the comments below!

The internal IT service desk here at Research In Motion® (RIM) knows me well! With the number of times I’ve dropped my laptop, messed up my email, and ‘accidentally’ deleted the wrong file from the server over the years, I’m pretty sure they have my mug shot posted in their offices.

But even for annoying users like me, the reality is that support is critical. And with smartphone devices becoming more ubiquitous and more robust in their capabilities, technical support is fast becoming a key facet in selecting an enterprise mobility vendor.

In between attending the Web 2.0 conference recently, I traded a few emails with the BlackBerry Technical Support Services Product Manager, Anna-Marie, to get a better understanding of the enhancements we’re making to this program.

Already available in 90 countries through five global support centers and offered in English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, BTSS offers a wide array of core services, preventative services and value add options for small and medium sized business (SMB) to large global enterprises. Have a look at this comparison chart for more details. I was surprised to find out just how much has changed since the days of Tx1-Tx5!

Based on customer feedback and partner demand, we’re updating the BTSS program effective as of November 22nd 2010 to better support two specific customer groups: BlackBerry MVS users and SMB customers.

BlackBerry® Mobile Voice System (MVS): MVS support is now included in the existing BlackBerry® Enterprise Server support contract. No separate support fees are required.

SMB: With increasing uptake of BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express in the small business arena, we have updated our BTSS program to suit this group’s growing needs:

• Given the pace at which SMBs operate, we now have a faster Basic response time of 8 hours.
• For SMBs with more complex or urgent requirements, we’ve also added a telephone submission process to the Enhanced Support offering.
• We’ve introduced new pricing for BES Express support which includes support for 30 BlackBerry smartphone users, and have created a per-person pricing option for deployments of over 30 BlackBerry smartphone users. Whatever your BES Express deployment size, we have a plan that fits your support needs and budget.

Overall, we’re constantly working at making technical support faster, cheaper, more responsive and flexible. What features would you like to see? What are other vendors doing that we should emulate? How could we better support your deployments? I look forward to your thoughts!

Learn more about BlackBerry Technical Support Services today!

Lisa is a Senior Marketing Manager for Enterprise Programs at Research In Motion® (RIM), which means she focuses on marketing activities to engage and educate the decision makers (IT and otherwise) at large organizations. Having worked with her in the past on numerous whitepapers and events, it was my pleasure to grab a coffee and chat with her about the upcoming Gartner’s IT Symposium / ITxpo 2010 in Orlando, Florida, October 17-22nd.

Lisa, once again RIM’s participating in Gartner’s expo…can you explain this event a bit more for those who may not be familiar?

Gartner ITxpo is one of the IT industry’s largest gathering of CIOs and senior IT professionals. The event is hosted by the Gartner analyst firm and encompasses over 350 sessions, workshops, how-to clinics, roundtables, exhibitor displays and more.

Will you be focusing on any particular BlackBerry® smartphone technologies this year?

This year it’s all about extending the platform. We will be featuring BlackBerry® Mobile Voice System 5.0 and Chalk Pushcast software. Additionally, there is a strong emphasis on Applications – Super Apps and Enterprise solutions in particular. For the first time at this event, we’ll be featuring partners in a BlackBerry Partner Pavilion. The companies that are participating either have pre-built enterprise applications or have the tools and expertise to help mobilize in-house applications. We’re very excited for attendees to meet with these experienced partners who offer numerous solutions: on the fly troubleshooting, protecting confidential calls, internal/external collaboration tools, and so on.

Can you tell me a bit about the BlackBerry Partner Pavilion?

Sure! The Partner Pavilion is a place for attendees to check out a variety of different BlackBerry Enterprise applications. We’ll have representatives from the following partners at the show to answer any questions:

• GWAVA – Retention/eDiscovery for PIN, SMS, Messenger text messages and phone data. Integrates with any email archive solution. No software on the devices. No additional hardware required.
• CONCEIVIUM Business Solutions – CONCEIVIUM is a leading technology company[true?] delivering innovative mobile infrastructure and device management products as well as priority messaging solutions for organizations around the world.
• Cellcrypt – Cellcrypt encrypts voice calls on BlackBerry smartphones, helping to ensure conversations remain confidential. Cellcrypt’s easy-to-use software provides government-grade security (FIPS 140-2) over cellular, Wi-Fi® and satellite networks.
• Zenprise – Zenprise Mobile Manager monitors, manages, and secures enterprise BlackBerry smartphones and will provision, monitor, troubleshoot, secure and run real-time reports across a distributed BlackBerry® Enterprise Server environment from a central dashboard.
• DragonRAD – DragonRAD is a mobility platform for building, deploying, managing, and securing mobile enterprise applications across all BlackBerry smartphones.
• Boxtone – Via a single unified console, BoxTone software delivers proactive management, monitoring, support and security of mobile users, devices, platforms and applications across the entire mobile lifecycle.
• IBM Lotus Software – Experience highly secure enterprise social networking capabilities and a highly secure framework for document-based collaboration on a BlackBerry smartphone.
• Vox Mobile – Vox Mobile specializes in Mobile Technology Management. Their services are segmented into Mobile Platform Services, Mobile Managed Services, and Mobile Engineering.
• Xobni Mobile – Xobni Mobile gives users effortless address book management. Automatically create profiles for everyone, ranked by importance and using lightning-fast search by name or company.

This year there is a unique way that attendees can interact with RIM – can you tell me a bit about that?

Our Customer Insights team will be on site doing in-depth customer interviews. This is an opportunity for you to tell us what you think about our products, services, partners, and more. RIM is committed to continually improving the customer experience and we value our customer’s opinions. If you are attending Gartner ITxpo we’d love to see you (visit RIM and our partners in booth #1200!), and if you’re interested in speaking with our Insights team, you can contact us to arrange an interview time.

Thanks Lisa, it certainly sounds like another great program, and hopefully customers will have a chance to meet you in person if they’re attending.

BlackBerry® Mobile Voice System 5 (BlackBerry® MVS 5) was one of the many announcements during WES 2010. During the show I had the chance to speak with Andrew from the Voice and Collaboration Platform team about the voice over Wi-Fi® calling capability of BlackBerry MVS 5, use cases and security features. Check out the video above demonstrating Wi-Fi calling and call transferring using BlackBerry MVS 5, then click the link below for my interview with Andrew.

Q: So what are some specific use cases for BlackBerry MVS 5?

A: People are increasingly working from home at least a few days a week, so in this scenario with BlackBerry MVS 5, you wouldn’t have to do any call forwarding, and you wouldn’t have a need for a separate business line at home. You just take your BlackBerry® smartphone with you, connect to your home Wi-Fi and it’s like your office phone comes with you as well.

Being at home and being able to sync my BlackBerry smartphone to my Wi-Fi router and make secure calls through my work extension – just as if as I was at the office – is an absolutely fabulous use case for a growing number of people in their work lives.

Another great use for BlackBerry MVS 5 is on campuses. You could be in a hospital or manufacturing plant, away from desktop phones, but with access to a voice grade Wi-Fi network – now you can make calls over that Wi-Fi network from your BlackBerry smartphone using your enterprise/work number versus your mobile number.

BlackBerry MVS 5 is a great way to optimize the use of your cellular voice plan, address coverage issues and maintain privacy of your cell phone number when working away from the office.

Q: What does the end-user need to do to be able to use BlackBerry MVS 5?

A: If your organization already has BlackBerry® Enterprise Server and BlackBerry MVS 5, then you just need to contact your IT group to get your BlackBerry account added to BlackBerry MVS 5. Your IT administrator can then push the software update and the VPN credentials to your BlackBerry smartphone – no user interaction required! After that you can simply connect to an available Wi-Fi network and choose to make calls from your work line, over Wi-Fi, from your BlackBerry smartphone. You’ll love how easy it is, and IT will rest easy knowing that your mobile work calls are routed through the corporate PBX and have the ability to help maintain corporate compliance regulations.

Q: Then, as a user, you just have to make sure that you connect to an available Wi-Fi network from your BlackBerry smartphone, and everything is taken care of for you?

A: Correct. Once your Wi-Fi is turned on and you’re connected to a Wi-Fi network, the administrator will have set it all up for you – you just have to start making calls.

Q: Anything else users need to know about BlackBerry MVS 5?

A: Your company needs to be running a supported IP PBX for BlackBerry MVS 5 (Cisco or Mitel to start, with other vendors to follow). Note that our BlackBerry MVS 4.6 version is available to customers with other vendors or legacy (TDM) PBXs and provides similar functionality over carrier mobile networks but does not support Wi-Fi calling.

If you’re looking for more info, be sure to check out the BlackBerry MVS 5 announcement and the BlackBerry MVS 5 product page on BlackBerry.com.