RIM releases BlackBerry Management Center for SMBs

RIM has announced a free online console for small businesses that want to manage BlackBerry smartphones that use non-RIM email services.

BlackBerry Management Center, unveiled on Monday, differs from existing RIM products such as BES Express in that it is designed to manage handsets accessing email from the likes of Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo, rather than from RIM's servers.

"We are pleased to introduce RIM’s latest cloud service designed specifically for small businesses," RIM enterprise product management chief Alan Panezic said in a statement. "BlackBerry Management Center is a free service and an effective way to manage and support employees' BlackBerry smartphones in the cloud."

BlackBerry Management Center supports the management of up to 100 Blackberry smartphones. It allows the wireless backing up of the devices on a regular basis and makes it possible to remotely reset passwords and restore settings and content on new or replacement handsets.

Lost or stolen handsets can also be remotely locked or wiped — including the data held on the device's microSD card — and lost phones can be located by making them ring loudly, RIM said.