We’ve heard about BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0 for over a year now. At WES 2007, ARGON was announced publically for the first time. From there on, it has been a slow and painful road through continual disappointment and delay. The plan was to have a very extensive nine month Beta program that would commence in August 2007 and on through the general availability of the software at WES 2008 in May. August came, August went. November came along and RIM published a Top 10 features list for ARGON and rumors were spreading of the pre-beta nomination process that was underway.
Fast-forward to April and we still have no new information, although it appers that some form of an early adoption and/or beta program is underway (reference WR17).
The month of May and the annual Wireless Enterprise Symposium are just around the corner. BES 5.0, commonly referred to by its codename “ARGON”, will not be released at WES 2008, however it will likely be announced during the week of WES and previewed (once again) during a breakout session by Pete Devenyl, VP of BlackBerry Software for Research In Motion (reference WR01).
Popular odds in the BGR Office Pool have the General Availability (GA) date for BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0 around December 2008 at the earliest and February/March 2009 at the latest. Then again, as with seemingly everything RIM has planned to launch over the past year or so, BES 5.0 has already been postponed no less than six months, so perhaps we should shoot for a WES 2009 release?
Assuming we receive no more news over the next five weeks, count on an update with more information from WES in sunny Orlando, Florida. Stay tuned…
