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Research In Motion (RIM) today made a play to capture more small businesses for its data access and mobile e-mail solutions by offering a free version of its BlackBerry server software. BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express delivers the very same capabilities as BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.1—tight integration with Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino or Novell GroupWise to enable, pushed-based wireless access to e-mail, organizer, Internet and intranet applications—but on a smaller scale, the company said.

BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express is free to anyone who purchases a new BlackBerry handheld. To register it, simply enter your device PIN here. Of course, you'll need a data plan from your wireless carrier to support mobile access from your BlackBerry to the behind-the-firewall solution.

After the initial first license, companies must pay $99 for each additional one, with a maximum of 15 users supported. Should you want to add more than 15 users, then you can purchase an electronic unlock key to the full BlackBerry Enterprise Server, making Express quite scalable.

While RIM sees a market in corporate America for Express - specifically in branch offices – it’s smaller offices that’ll do best with the new server. When speaking with PDAStreet RIM's director of product marketing David Wilmering used the example of construction company, where one guy gets a BlackBerry and downloads Express because he wants all the features of the server for wireless e-mail, calendar, contacts and access to applications. Then the next guy says that's cool and it grows from there.

Before Express, small business could choose from the BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) or BlackBerry Enterprise Server Small Business Edition. BIS - hosted remotely by RIM itself - is limited to providing users access to corporate or personal e-mail. BlackBerry Enterprise Server Small Business Edition costs $1,099 (MSRP), which makes Express an economical choice; especially for small businesses that want to start small with just a few BlackBerrys.

Express and SMB Edition play to different markets, although they both tap out at 15 users before requiring an unlock key to the full server. "SMB server plays a role in the slightly larger organization. Where they've decided, you know what, we're doing this as a company. And we are going to start with five or seven people - or whatever - and we see it growing to fifteen, twenty or thirty; in that sort of range. I think it's a very different mind set. We've already decided we're going to do it. We want the power of the server," he said.

Wilmering added that Express answers a couple of key concerns of small business. "One is up front costs. Small businesses just don't have as much disposable income to throw up font. But they also want a universal solution that will handle everything they're trying to do. They can't afford to buy a separate system for applications, a separate system for e-mail, a separate system for anti-virus, and a separate system for firewalls. They want to have an easy all-in-one solution that's going to allow them to grow as their business grows," according to Wilmering.

RIM earns 70 percent of its revenue from BlackBerry device sales. With increased competition from the likes of Microsoft, Nokia, Palm and others, as well as yet another legal entanglement - with fellow mob-e-mail provider Visto, which is suing the Canadian vendor over patents - brewing, it can't hurt to offer another segment of the market an incentive to give its software (and by extension more of its hardware) a try.

Latest BlackBerry Server
BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.1 premiered just a couple of months ago. It includes expanded support for corporate instant messaging, an enhanced application development framework, and the ability to wirelessly reinstall data onto a replacement handheld. So when enterprises upgraded to 4.1, users could now exchange instant messages through Microsoft Windows Messenger, Live Communications Server 2005 and IBM Lotus Sametime.

It also incorporates support for the new BlackBerry Mobile Data System (MDS) application development tool, which includes BlackBerry MDS Studio-a new visual development tool for creating BlackBerry wireless applications from Web Services. The aim is to enhance the capacity for RIM's 60,000 BlackBerry customers to create corporate applications beyond e-mail and messaging, such as CRM solutions.

Also, in the past, when an employee's BlackBerry handheld was lost or stolen, they would've had to return to the corporate office to sync up the data that was on the old device to their new BlackBerry through a desktop. Not any more. With BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.1, administrators can wireless push the data to the replacement.

Version 4.1 also provides a common interface for managing multiple BlackBerry Enterprise Servers and enables properties and tasks - such as IT policies, e-mail filters, MDS access controls, application pushes, synchronization settings, auto signatures and software configurations.