Hi, all the BES admins out there,


We are currently a Lotus Notes shop but we are migrating to Exchange 2003 SP2 soon. As a result of the migration we need to switch from BES for Notes to Exchange. I want to go straight to BES 4.1 for Exchange but my manager wants to go to 4.0 instead because BES 4.1 has not been around long enough.

What do you guys think? BES 4.0 or 4.1? For those of you who are currently running version 4.1 are there any issues or bugs that make you feel like going back to 4.0 and upgrade later?

thanks for the advice

how many users?

if i had to make the decision today on 4.0 or 4.1, i'd go with 4.1. simply put, there have been too many issues to date with Exchange 2003 SP2 and 4.0. they were supposed to have added 'support' for the new calendaring functionality with 4.0.3 (per the KB initially), but then they pushed that back to 4.0.4 (that was a few MONTHS after SP2's release). at that point, there were still some issues that were only addressed recently in 4.0.4 HF2.

i havent had any issues, personally, with 4.1. some others have ached on the installation of it w/ the MDS Services option. there are a few threads on here. some claim its still buggy. i found some issues with the WTLS policy options (cosmetic wording, and it appears they left some out), which i don't use. aside from that, nothing has really happened to my installation - perfect upgrade from 4.0.3, no issues with activations thus far, etc.

We have about 2400 users for now. Will expand to about 4000 in a year or two.

Personally, I like the role-based administration and central management piece that 4.1 offers. We do not use MDS much at all. My manager prefers stability for now so most likely we will go to BES 4.0 SP4 HF2. Hopefully by the time we go to 4.1 most of the issues with upgrade and bugs will be fixed.

Thanks for your help

I think the IM clients alone are worth going to 4.1.

assuming one has LCS, i agree. however, with that many users, you have to balance out accountability with feature-added functionality. the role-based administration didn't exactly turn out to be what i was wishing for - still have to implement SQL permissions for individuals (or groups - but still a hassle) and no web-based client-less administration GUI... definitely not a reason to upgrade to 4.1, imo.