RIM, HP team up on BlackBerry services

BlackBerry-maker RIM and HP have teamed up for a new set of services aimed at the smartphone platform.

As part of the partnership, HP debuted its Operations Manager for BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES).

The HP Operations Manager software, typically used to keep an eye on the likes of mainframes and file servers, will now be extended to allow IT departments to monitor the company's BlackBerry estate from mail servers to databases, Microsoft Active Directory and server operating systems, as well as BES software itself.

In the future, HP Operations Manager should also give administrators an overview of what applications are running on the BlackBerry platform.

HP, which has its own line of businesses handhelds under the iPaq brand, already manages 500,000 smartphones through services company EDS, which it acquired last year.

The partnership will also see the launch of HP's CloudPrint service for BlackBerry devices. Users of the service will be able to send documents to a virtual HP printer in the cloud, where they are stored until needed. The documents can then be retrieved and printed on any internet-enabled PC with a printer by entering a code assigned to the document on the CloudPrint website.

Road warriors could print out documents on an office, hotel or internet café PC without the need to download additional printer drivers or find a way of transferring a document from their handheld to the other computer.

The system will use "a generic printer driver that works with pretty much any printer on planet earth", according to Alan Panezic, vice president of platform product management at RIM.