Hi all, nearly every issue i have ever had with any blackberry ive found a solution for here, so i finally have a question and hope it can be answered as well.


I have to setup a office of 12 BB users with the new Blackberry Professional software (no need for BES, yet). I know that when you purchase a blackberry you are entitled to download this software for free, and connect your blackberry as it includes one cal.

If i was to connect the remaining 11 users are their "free" cals valid to connect to the server? Or will i have to purchase a ten+1 pack of cals in addition.

When you enter your pin in the download area it provides you with a cal and a download link along with the following information

BlackBerry Professional Software 4.1 for Microsoft Exchange - 1 User

Quantity: 1

* Number 1 of 1
* SRP ID: S6****7**
* SRP Authentication Key: 8p43-****-rj7j-ese5-****-89tr-****-6zkq-24ex-****
* CAL ID: C00019*****
* CAL Authentication Key: bescal-5v8xh5-*****-*****-*****

Using this info i was able to join 4 users to a test server without issue.


Any help would be great as i don't want to go and spend $1200 if they already own a license for access to this Bb pro software.

Run 12 BES Pro instances? That's cheap...

lol i dunno how well my exchange server would like that....

The free one is free forever.
You will need to buy a 10 pack and 1 single to make it to 12.

There was a 5 free user version once a while ago.
You had to enter in 5 PIN numbers at RIMs site to get it.
Looks like its gone now.

Exchange wont like 12 BES pro boxes.
And think of the resources to run it.
even 2 VM servers will be more than 2000.00

You don't have to run 12 BES pro boxes. You can go to the site, input each pin, then you will get an email for the link to the software, the SRP, and the CAL. You can install ONE BES Pro box, and go to licensing on the BES and input the other 11 cals and you will have 12 available users. Is this what it was meant for, probably not, but I have scoured the license agreements and the blackberry site and have not seen anything specifically condemning the practice. It simply says you will get 1 CAL for each valid PIN and as long as you reside in a country where the products are made available, I can't see where you are breaking any rules. Besides, RIM can tell that all of the CALs are coming from the same SRP identifier and could shut it off if they wanted, I'm sure.