Migration from BlackBerry to Windows Mobile to Save Company Money

One company, Global Crossing, is in the process of dumping its fleet of 5,000 BlackBerry smartphones for Windows phones running Windows Mobile. The move will be done in conjunction with the firm's upgrade from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010, which brings added features such as unified messaging, visual voicemail and voicemail transcription, among others. Read on to learn why Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and Windows Mobile will be saving firms money, time, and support costs.

Unfortunately, the move isn't done because of the stellar feature sets that Windows Mobile 6.5 delivers, but rather because of Exchange and its integration with ActiveSync. According to Global Crossings, "RIM requires that you pay for a license for the BlackBerry servers. You pay a license for every BlackBerry user that you have connected, and then you also pay for support and maintenance for the servers and users." The stinger comes in when the firm says it would rather have iPhones running Exchange ActiveSync than BlackBerry devices: "But at the same time I would much rather have an employee go out get an iPhone than a BlackBerry because an iPhone uses ActiveSync and therefore costs us nothing, and a BlackBerry costs us money."

Aside from server, licensing, and support costs for BlackBerry servers, there's also the issue that Blackberries use more bandwidth. According to WMPU, "As a result, you have BlackBerry servers running alongside the Exchange server, and also every mailbox with a BlackBerry connection to Exchange uses five times the connection resources that a mailbox with an Exchange ActiveSync client uses."

Windows phones aren't eh only ones that use Exchange ActiveSync technology. Nokia, Palm, Motorola, Android, iPhone, and others have also licensed the Microsoft technology.

(via: WMPowerUser)