My brother mentioned to me that his office installed a Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) recently and he says that it is saving him 20-30 minutes per day. Now that his corporate mail is completely tied into his Blackberry, he only reads a message once – either at his desk or on his mobile, but not both. He files messages once, deletes them once.
The time saving is the big benefit to the user; but the BES represents major handcuffs on users looking at alternative solutions for mobile email. That is a bonus for RIM.
At the end of the day, mobile devices are consumer electronics – subject to fashion and style trends (the “cool” factor) as much as they rely on having raw capabilities. Technology advantages can be transient – creative manufacturers will add features to match or beat their competition. Cool is harder to copy and cool makes it harder to stay on top: look at the current wave that Motorola is riding and ask Nokia about suddenly losing consumer momentum.
It seems to me that BES is an answer to how RIM can insulate themselves, in part, from some of the fickleness of the marketplace. Analysts should look at the percentage of subscribers that use carrier Blackberry Web Clients versus subscribers with Blackberry Exchange Servers. It is a metric that will help understand how secure is the Blackberry client base.