BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) for MDS Applications, a new version of BES that allows organizations to mobilize apps independently of wireless e-mail deployments, is now available from Research In Motion (RIM).

The company developed BES for MDS because companies deploying BES have often taken advantage of BlackBerrys to handle more than e-mail. Until now, however, mob-e-mail was a necessary requirement of implementation. And yet, just because workers are mobile, it doesn’t mean messaging is an essential part their jobs.

Therefore BES for MDS allows users to create, deploy and manage applications for mobile workers who don't have e-mail accounts; merge application and e-mail infrastructures under the same operational framework if currently managed separately; and better leverage Java developers and BlackBerry ISV Alliance Program members to develop wireless apps for BlackBerry. It also facilitate ISPs ability to offer hosted wireless applications.

“Many of our customers want a solution that can decouple wireless e-mail from other wireless applications, while providing the same level of security and control that they trust and rely upon in BlackBerry,” according to RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis, in a statement.

With MDS, RIM said (when it first introduced the solution in May) organizations can deploy custom-made or out-of-the-box field service, sales force automation, CRM, healthcare, transportation, logistics or SAP applications, for example, to personnel and their BlackBerrys, while saving money by negating the need to purchase e-mail licenses where necessary before.

“You don’t have to buy an e-mail seat to wirelessly enable that user. You can just wirelessly enable that user,” explained RIM’s director of product marketing David Wilmering to PDAStreet at the time.

Wilmering said the development of BES for MDS resulted from RIM seeing over the years that there’s a class of customer that wants e-mail and those that want e-mail and applications for BlackBerry. Then there are those who don’t have or need e-mail accounts at a company, but want to wirelessly get at their applications.

“So if you think of field service people, people in transportation, people in healthcare, who have almost the opposite priority, which is access to applications is the most important thing for me and accessing e-mail is either secondary or something they don’t even do today,” according to Wilmering.

He added that BES for MDS has all the security, reliability and management interfaces of the regular BlackBerry server, so “it can be managed as part of the family, but it can also be setup and deployed independently.”

This is important because you’ll often find that the people managing wireless applications are not the same as those managing and administering your e-mail system. Those managing the apps will most likely want their own separate BES deployment.

“This announcement allows us to serve a whole new class of user, where it’s just applications,” said Wilmering, and a company may choose to serve all three types of users – e-mail only, e-mail plus applications, or applications only – through a combination of BES and BES for MDS deployments.

RIM lists BES for MDS as $2,999 per server for one user liscence or $3,999 for 20 licenses.