Managing deployed software - anyone know the answer?

[wistowg]

Currently have 1500+ users across 9 BESs in an Exch2003 environment. Sadly, not yet in a common SQL env't - stand-alone MSDE on each BES until first quarter '07 at earliest. BESs running 4.0 or 4.1.

Starting to use various 3rd party apps which deploy wirelessly without problems but I am really struggling to find a simple way of managing and reporting on the deployments. By that I mean:
- how to interrogate to show who has had which app or apps deployed?
- how to ensure redeploy of all apps on device swap-out?
- how to manage licensing issues?

Are all these things which will be available via SQL queries once we move to a common database? If so, great, I'll manage till then. If not, anyone know of a way of doing it?

[BEShelpguy]

that's an interesting issue which I have never thought of. I think 2 BES features could assist you with ensuring deployment to correct users and to a lesser extent, licensing.

- Handheld config tool allows you to specify which OS verisons are loaded onto devices and which apps are allowed. You can assign different configurations to different users ensuring that the software policy follows the user not the device.

- MDS Services in BES 4.1 at the moment, this still seems a little difficult to deploy (as you have to manually load the client onto the device) but it will then allow you to wirelessly push installed apps to devices from the BES

[wistowg]

Thanks, but as far as I can see, the BlackBerry Handheld Configuration Tool is no longer available in version 4.1 and manually loading something onto all 1500 devices (UK, Mainland Europe, CIS, Middle East & Asia) is not a workable solution I'm afraid. If I could deploy it wirelessly that would be a different matter, but laying hands on all devices just ain't possible.