DevelopIQ were proud to support BlackBerry® at the BlackBerry 10 launch event in London last week. For many inside and outside BlackBerry the announcement of the all-touch Z10 and trademark-qwerty Q10 smartphones was a significant milestone for the mobile industry veteran. Not only did they announce the consolidation of the BlackBerry brand and launch a re-invented mobile computing platform, but they displayed a renewed confidence and courage in product marketing not seen before - all of which were comforting to the loyal developers and partners who have supported the platform over its protracted development through to launch.

The BlackBerry 10 launch therefore not only marks the beginning of an exciting new platform and developer ecosystem but also the arrival of a mobile computing platform that is truly liberating for the app developer. Big brand or bedroom developer, there's no walled garden to restrict your ideas, no debilitating fragmentation to hamper your release nor an un-curated store in which you struggle to get noticed or evoke quality. Instead a re-engineered, open-source friendly, highly performant, resilient OS with an Astonishing user experience. One that's built to not only help the end user get things done efficiently but to also ensure developers can rapidly create, port or re-package their apps from other mobile platforms or create brand new native apps for the platform using the ground-breaking Cascades development environment.

An obvious mis-match at launch was the underwhelming press reaction vs. the hoards of customers emptying stores of product on respective launch days across the globe. Whilst the press were looking for a revolutionary new feature that would 'kill' the competition, the end users were experiencing subtle innovation to those areas that are used day-in day-out to be productive - the innovative keyboard, the social aggregation within the BlackBerry Hub or the time-saving features such as the timeshift camera or the 'peek and flow' gestures to efficiently multi-task. It's these evolutionary ideas that fill the gaps so often left by products with obvious 'killer' features - those products that typically excite one's emotions initially yet don't deliver long term productivity for the user, whether for business or pleasure. It's this aspect of the new platform - the social & communication productivity & flow - that's very true to BlackBerry's DNA, using intuitive gestures and subtle animation to elevate the user experience to a new level.

Having worked with the evolving platform for some time now, the excitement from our perspective is that we now have a mobile computing platform with which we can be truly creative - both commercially and technically. We can rapidly create apps that not only deliver great user experiences but also perform excellently with no compromise. We can also create or re-use existing native code that delivers truly amazing multimedia experiences in a fraction of the time it took previously.

We're very proud of our first BlackBerry 10 app, the Guardian, which has had an overwhelming reception from both our customer and end users alike. We're also excited to be bringing some other high profile brands to the platform shortly - please don't hesitate to get in touch if you'd like to join them!

Whilst BlackBerry Enterprise Server is still hard to beat for efficiency and scalability in a true end-to-end mobile push solution for email, PIM and even custom apps, Microsoft's ActiveSync has become the de-facto cross-platform push email protocol, having been licensed to many smartphone/tablet manufacturers and MDM vendors as the protocol of choice for cross-platform push email delivery from Microsoft Exchange. MDM vendors such as MobileIron have even extended their solution to include an ActiveSync proxy server called Sentry, to further secure access to ActiveSync and ensure that an integrated, policy-based approach can be applied to not only users' devices, but also to their access to Exchange Server ActiveSync.

However, whilst cross-platform protocols and solutions have proven a worthwhile evolution for smartphone-agnostic CIOs and companies embracing BYOD policies, they almost inevitably suffer in availability terms compared to an end-to-end solution from a single vendor. We're also now in an era where users' access to mobile messaging and the availability of cloud-based solutions is expected to be near 100%, 24x7. It's therefore critical that both cloud services partners and CIOs consider the availability of the ActiveSync server itself. There's little point in carefully considering the availability of your perimeter network and Exchange Server without also considering the touch point for all your mobile users - your ActiveSync server.

Being a cloud services provider for MobileIron and Exchange Server 2010, DevelopIQ determined that the existing availability monitoring solutions in the market weren't sufficient for this task. Testing the availability of an end point on the internet does not provide satisfactory confirmation that an end user's device can negotiate the ActiveSync protocol, successfully authenticate and send & receive email.

We're therefore proud to announce that we've recently launched our cloud-based ActiveSync Monitoring solution in beta and it's already being used to ensure and validate the availability of our cloud services customers' Exchange Server and MobileIron Sentry ActiveSync end points, thereby ensuring that their end users are experiencing the 100% availability they expect.

The difference between this solution and a generic network availability monitoring solution is that our service exchanges synthetic ActiveSync protocol messages with the monitored server - exactly as a user's device would. It negotiates the ActiveSync protocol, authenticates access to the mailbox and sends a message to our system to validate successful email transmission, thereby providing 100% confidence in the availability of the ActiveSync solution. Should any of these validation steps fail, then an automatic email and/or SMS notification is despatched to the configured admin contacts with the required diagnostics information. Reporting will also be made available to analyse the availability of the solution over recent periods, allowing optimisations to be made and SLAs to me measured and validated.

We'd therefore like to invite any existing or prospective customers who may have a requirement for ActiveSync monitoring to please get in touch with us. We'd happy to discuss your requirements and provide access to the beta service should you wish to evaluate it in more detail.

Existing customers do not have to make any changes, end users can update their devices as and when they choose and you can rest assured that the security, management and monitoring of your devices will continue to operate as normal. Key new features for iOS 5 and MDM are:

• Over the air activation and upgrades - All devices with iOS 5 installed may be activated and updated wirelessly.
• iCloud - Automatically backup up iOS 5 data to the Apple iCloud service. Using MDM this may be enabled or disabled wirelessly.
• Email Forwarding - IT may now disable this setting so that corporate email cannot be forwarded through a personal account.
• S/MIME enforcement - IT may now mandate that all email utilize S/MIME, providing greater security and ensuring message integrity.
• App Deletion - IT may now delete any app that was installed using MobileIron, including as an automatic compliance action.
• Web Proxy - Configure a web proxy instead of having to rely on the end-user to setup this manually.

If you are considering an iOS or Android deployment within your organisation we can provide advice on device management, app delivery and development.

Further details on the position have been posted on our Careers page. If you have great service skills and are looking for a step up from Support to SysAdmin then this could also be the position for you.

When developing an app with a customer we're often asked to predict app usage in order to correctly size cloud resources such as content delivery, media streaming and push notifications. As many are aware, the smartphone has now overtaken the personal computer in the world as the consumer platform of choice and the exponential proliferation of apps and their usage will only serve to accelerate this trend. It's therefore worth pausing for a moment to consider what this rapid growth could mean in real terms - an important consideration if one is to deliver a consistent user experience to large numbers of mobile users across the world. I recently came across a very visual metaphor for what exponential growth looks like.

"Imagine a magic pipette. It is magic because every drop of water that comes out of it will double in size every minute. So the first minute there is one drop, the second minute there are two drops, the third minute four drops, the fourth minute eight drops and so on… This is an example of exponential growth. Now, imagine a normal sized football stadium. In this stadium you are sitting on the seat at the very top of the stadium, with the best overview of the whole stadium. To make things more interesting, imagine the stadium is completely water-tight and that you cannot move from your seat. The first drop from the magic pipette is dropped right in the middle of the field, at 12pm. Here's the question: Remembering that this drop grows exponentially by doubling in size every minute, how much time do you have to free yourself from the seat and leave the stadium before the water reaches your seat at the very top? Think about it for a moment. Is it hours, days, weeks, months?

The answer: You have exactly until 12:49pm. It takes this tiny magic drop less than 50 minutes to fill a whole football stadium with water. This is impressive! But it gets better: At what time do you think the football stadium is still 93% empty? Take a guess.

The answer: At 12:45pm. So, you sit and watch the drop growing, and after 45 minutes all you see is the playing field covered with water. And then, within four more minutes, the water fills the whole stadium. This means that you think you are safe because it seems that you have plenty of time left, whereas due to the exponential growth you really have to take immediate action if you want to have any chance of getting out of this situation."

Exponential growth is therefore not only rapid, but we also have very little time in which to react to any situation before it's too late. It's therefore vital to ensure that the cloud platform powering your apps is not only scalable, but also elastic enough to react to a rapid uptake in usage. Our recent work on the Official Rugby World Cup 2011 Apps bore this out - with usage spreading across over 150 countries within hours of release.

Delivering the next generation of apps therefore requires three key ingredients - the app itself, the content delivery and a cloud platform that's elastic enough to provide consistent continuity of service to an exponentially growing audience. At DevelopIQ we've therefore focussed on differentiating ourselves as an app developer and cloud services provider who can deliver this compelling, end-to-end combination of capabilities that's elastic enough to react to the exponential growth in app usage that will become common over the coming months and years.

Add-RecipientPermission "Event" -AccessRights SendAs -Trustee "Daniel"

Nice and easy.

It's been known for some time in the app world that content is king if you want to deliver an app experience that your users return to day in, day out - whether it's delivering timely, relevant content to your users or integrating it into their daily view of what's important to them on their smartphone. However, whilst simple and clear in concept, this directive has become harder to implement in practice across multiple mobile platforms, app stores, in-app purchase mechanisms and analytics. Each manufacturer's platform has its idiosyncrasies - from push integration to in-app purchase transaction reporting and social integration - before you even get into the actual development differences between the platforms. In the current climate where budgets are stretched and deadlines are tight, re-inventing the wheel several times across multiple mobile platforms just doesn't make smart app strategy.

There are some solutions out there that aim to simplify the cross-platform development challenge - for instance PhoneGap, Sencha and many others, as well as html widget-based development platforms such as BlackBerry WebWorks. However, there are two significant challenges when taking one of these higher level approaches.

Firstly, there's the inevitable compromise associated with trying to address app development using a lowest common denominator approach. This may not be such an issue in a largely content-driven app with minimal native integration or real-time features. But as soon as you get into those areas you'll find that you're limited by development platform APIs not quite offering parity with what's possible with the native device APIs, and before too long you'll find yourself designing your user experience based on the available APIs rather than what's optimum or intuitive for that particular mobile platform.

Secondly, and we think far more importantly, these development solutions don't even address the cross-platform integration challenges of data aggregation, push integration, in-app purchase delivery or analytics - since these challenges can only be solved server-side, not device-side. Traditionally these elements are integrated on an app-by-app or project-by-project basis, but more often than not this is also implemented separately for each mobile platform by independent app development agencies.

It's for this reason that we've taken the approach to develop a unique server-side aggregation layer that abstracts much of this work from each app/project (thus helping your deadline and budget), allowing common tasks such as data feed aggregation & caching, in app-purchase delivery, push integration and cross-platform analytics to be configured once server-side for an app and then integrated using native APIs on each mobile platform, thereby focussing on the optimum user experience for each mobile platform rather than the lowest common denominator. The end result is a single source of integration and reporting across all your mobile platforms, a single cloud platform on which to configure your content integration & premium downloads as well as a single support team of smartphone and tablet experts to call on when you have any integration or content delivery queries - thereby saving you management time as well as maximising your budget and hitting your deadlines.

By taking an end-to-end approach to Total Apps, we therefore feel that this heavily differentiates us to deliver the next generation of mobile apps - whether it's real-time sporting events, premium content delivery or streaming media - we have the ability to not only develop the apps themselves across the leading smartphone and tablet OS, but also the highly resilient, app-centric cloud infrastructure that will ensure your users can't live without your app in their daily routine.

Exchange Control Panel
ECP is a web portal allowing end user settings configuration and administrator management. Administrators can create mailboxes, transport rules and many other common tasks. Under the hood ECP executes PowerShell cmdlets.

Exchange Management Shell
EMS is PowerShell for Exchange, it is at the heart of all Exchange management. It can be accessed interactively or programmatically, particularly useful for integrating with other services and line of businesses applications.

To connect to the DevelopIQ remote PowerShell servers simply run the following:

$ExCredential = Get-Credential

$ExSession = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://mail.developiq.net/powershell -Authentication Basic -Credential $ExCredential

Import-PSSession $ExSession

The full list of cmdlets will vary based on RBAC and service plan, topping out at well over 200 cmdlets.

Our own CloudSync service uses remote PowerShell as the engine behind our web service.

Roles Based Access Control
RBAC allows granular access to what both administrators and end users can do. It is defined as a bunch of PowerShell cmdlets and parameters applied to groups.

Exchange Web Services
EWS is a way to programmatically access the mailbox, for example Outlook 2011 for Mac uses EWS rather than MAPI. Fully documented on MSDN it is the best way to integrate mailboxes with other applications.

The BlackBerry-only instant messaging app has been part of the platform since the very beginning and became the next killer-app after email when RIM not only launched the hugely successful and low cost BlackBerry Curve, but also rapidly expanded into developing markets with pre-paid tariff support. Having been released from the limitations and usage costs of SMS, the more cost-conscious young consumer segment embraced the real-time messaging client and fuelled the incredible growth seen in recent months.

Today saw the the latest evolution of the platform, BBM 6, which adds the critical ability for third party applications to integrate with this engaging social platform. DevelopIQ have of course been working with RIM for over a year from early product requirements through to private betas and are excited that this compelling feature set is now available for our customers to leverage in their apps.

However, significant thought went into the security and privacy of the BBM community and it's therefore important to not only understand the opportunities that the new social platform brings, but also the inherent limitations and possible impact on your app's user experience. The following features and limitations are worth considering in relation to your app:

• Automatically share user status
  Feature: this allows you to populate your users' BBM status line with their activity in your app
  Limitation: Don't over-use this as the user will be prompted to confirm any status changes
   
• In-app Chat
  Feature: add the ability to chat with BBM friends from inside your app
  Limitation: be careful how this impacts the already-limited screen real estate
   
• Real-time data exchange
  Feature: enable your app to communicate from one user to another
  Limitation: communicate clearly that the other user must also have BBM 6 and your app installed
   
• Share download link
  Feature: allow your users to share your App World download link via BBM
  Limitation: none - user the viral nature of BBM to let your users spread the word!

Hopefully the brief insight above describes both the compelling features offered by the latest generation of BBM, but also prompts some thought as to how best you can leverage the new platform in your app. As always, we're here to help, and given our experience and expertise in BBM integration, we look forward to helping you get the most from the next generation of the BBM story.

Look out for the release of some high profile apps we're currently working on that will showcase some of the great BBM 6 features above!