Microsoft announces plans for Blackberry killer
Microsoft on Monday publicly disclosed plans to take on the hugely popular BlackBerry PDA from Research In Motion.
Later this year, the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant plans to offer software to "allow the kind of direct mobile messaging you all want," CEO Steve Ballmer told several thousand IT professionals and partners at the company's Tech Ed 2005 conference in Orlando.
"This is push e-mail--the kind we have not delivered and RIM has historically delivered without additional management costs," Ballmer said. "It's enabled by Active Directory, and you can control policy on those mobile devices. It is included with Exchange."
That capability requires Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 and the Messaging and Security Feature Pack for Windows Mobile 5.0, Ballmer. Both service packs are due out later this year.
