Dell Computer, in an impressive endorsement of Canadian handheld manufacturer Research In Motion (RIM), will begin offering the RIM BlackBerry wireless e-mail solution to its major U.S. corporate customers by the end of the month.

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Dell intends to target the BlackBerry solution at enterprise-level IT organizations. The technology allows e-mail messages to be forwarded automatically to the handheld device, also giving users the same ability to respond to or manipulate the message as they would through their PC or network connection.

The e-mail forwarding capabilities are achieved in one of two ways: through a desktop PC configuration, through which messages are forwarded from the user's PC, or through a server-based configuration, through which messages are forwarded from a central server that is set up and maintained by the enterprise's IS department.

"A draw back of the PC configuration is that users have to leave their PC running for the message redirection to occur," says Mike Lazaridis, president and founder of Research In Motion. "But the trend has most companies opting for laptops, which users disconnect from the network entirely when they leave the office. It's here that the server model becomes useful."

Dell will not make the BlackBerry wireless e-ail solution available to visitors at the revamped Dell.com Web site, further evidence that Dell is far more interested in equipping large IT structures with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server than it is with courting smaller operations with the Blackberry PC solution.

"BlackBerry is a wide-area solution," said a Dell spokesman. "It's for big IT shops that need to determine what their hand-held standard will be and get [that standard] under control."

"We also feel [Blackberry] requires some consulting," Crawley said. "We don't want to just throw it up for sale on the Web. Its best value is when we go directly to big IT shops."

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, a Los Angeles-based law firm, is in the middle of rolling out 500 server-supported BlackBerry wireless e-mail units purchased directly from RIM before the Dell deal. The company conducted a pilot test of the BlackBerry desktop solution early this year and found that, while the product functions well in the PC mode, it was not supportable on the scale required. Moreover, company officials were not happy with its security.

"We now have two servers and about 350 handheld units deployed," said Eric Hamburg, CIO of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. "From an operational perspective, the units we acquired are running smoothly... [but] the desktop mode presented security issues that didn't play well with our primary audience -- attorneys with laptops."

With security a top priority among IT managers, both the BlackBerry PC redirector and the server redirector provide end-to-end e-mail encryption using Triple DES security standards.

But the real security comes with the enterprise server model.

"The PC version is interesting, but IT managers lose control of corporate intellectual property," said Bob Egan, an analyst at the Gartner Group, in Stamford, Conn.. "Just imagine some salesman redirecting his own email all over the place from a PC that's left running by itself. You begin to chip holes into your corporate firewall."

While the BlackBerry Enterprise Server can be configured as a self-contained corporate security environment, modifications and software additions can still be made to the handheld unit by the end-user because the BlackBerry system is compatible with up to five different personal information manager offerings -- which some observers said may prove to be the real security headache.

"The real cost-of-ownership IT managers have to factor in here is in the unit's nonstandard operating platform," said Gartner's Egan. "And knowing you'll need other devices, like a phone, a laptop -- well, this nonstandard platform handicaps an IT manager heading into the long term."

As for Dell, Egan said that "Dell is looking at the short term here. It's a portfolio fill for Dell, an easy fill with a product that's been gaining ground."

Dell Computer Corp., based in Round Rock, Texas, is at www.dell.com. Research In Motion, Ltd., based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, is at www.rim.net.