Former BES Admin turned iPhone user

**juwaack68** · 01-08-2013, 07:50 AM

Hello all! I've been a member here since 2007 but mostly just for poking around and reading the awesome blogs. For the last 9 years I have been the BES admin here, and provided the majority of support for our BlackBerry deployment.

Unfortunately, RIM has fallen behind the times, and our company has decided to switch to all iPhones for corporate supported devices....so our BB deployment has dropped from over 1000 devices globally to around 425 in the last year....and we plan to have everyone switched over to iPhones (or other personal devices using our stipend program) by the end of March this year. Been a huge change. On a side note, I do hope the upcoming BB10 devices do well for RIM, I really do. BB was a great device once.....

I carried a BB for all of those 9 years, either thru work or personally, and for the last couple of years I also had an iPhone from work (since we started with a small group of iPhone users and I had to support them).

This past weekend, we bit the bullet and my family made the switch to all iPhone 5's. Both my daughter and I had BB Bold 9930's, my husband had an EVO Shift, and my son had an iPhone 4S. We also switched from Sprint to Verizon and HOLY COW we have LTE in our area. SOOOOOO fast (but now sooooo easy to blow past our data pool!). By the way, WalMart is having a sale on iPhone 5's thru this Friday for upgrade-eliglble lines or new activations....we got our iPhone 5's for $127 each (16GB).

Anywho.....that's me, fully switched over to iOS, and loving it. Oh, we also have 2 iPad Mini's (me and daughter), a full size iPad (hubby), and a few iPod Touch's floating around the house. No Macs.....yet.

Hope to be around here more and contributing a bit more as well.

**kch50428** · 01-08-2013, 08:26 AM

Welcome... check out the blog side of iMore... there's lots of tutorials, how-tos, etc. that you might find worth sharing with your users and make your support easier.

**audit** · 01-08-2013, 10:51 AM

Welcome to the dark side Julie!!!!

**Laelipoo** · 01-08-2013, 11:34 AM

Sounds like a lot of work, but you're handling it wonderfully. Welcome to iMore!

**John Yester** · 01-08-2013, 12:55 PM

Hey!!

Welcome to iMore forums. Be sure first check the following links.

http://forums.imore.com/faq.php?faq=...faq_imorerules

http://forums.imore.com/faq.php?faq=vb3_board_faq

We do have a technical/Support side on the forums, but we also have a Off Topic Lounge area where you can discuss non Apple ideas, etc.

Please make you self at home and never hesitate to ask a question as our community is TOP notch, and will get you a answer right away.

In addition you will notice the search bar at the top of the page, this may help you find some additional help you maybe looking for.

http://forums.imore.com/search.php

Again welcome and glad to have you here!!!!

**zerog46** · 01-08-2013, 01:37 PM

Hey look who it is.

**Fausty82** · 01-08-2013, 05:40 PM

Hey, Jules:

Welcome to the forums... good to have you hanging out around here!

**Jaguarr40** · 01-08-2013, 06:43 PM

Originally Posted by juwaack68

Hello all! I've been a member here since 2007 but mostly just for poking around and reading the awesome blogs. For the last 9 years I have been the BES admin here, and provided the majority of support for our BlackBerry deployment.

Unfortunately, RIM has fallen behind the times, and our company has decided to switch to all iPhones for corporate supported devices....so our BB deployment has dropped from over 1000 devices globally to around 425 in the last year....and we plan to have everyone switched over to iPhones (or other personal devices using our stipend program) by the end of March this year. Been a huge change. On a side note, I do hope the upcoming BB10 devices do well for RIM, I really do. BB was a great device once.....

I carried a BB for all of those 9 years, either thru work or personally, and for the last couple of years I also had an iPhone from work (since we started with a small group of iPhone users and I had to support them).

This past weekend, we bit the bullet and my family made the switch to all iPhone 5's. Both my daughter and I had BB Bold 9930's, my husband had an EVO Shift, and my son had an iPhone 4S. We also switched from Sprint to Verizon and HOLY COW we have LTE in our area. SOOOOOO fast (but now sooooo easy to blow past our data pool!). By the way, WalMart is having a sale on iPhone 5's thru this Friday for upgrade-eliglble lines or new activations....we got our iPhone 5's for $127 each (16GB).

Anywho.....that's me, fully switched over to iOS, and loving it. Oh, we also have 2 iPad Mini's (me and daughter), a full size iPad (hubby), and a few iPod Touch's floating around the house. No Macs.....yet.

Hope to be around here more and contributing a bit more as well.

We are most happy to meet you and glad to have you as part of our family.

**naviwilliams** · 01-08-2013, 07:34 PM

Julie, we go wayyyyy back

Welcome!

**jefftam68** · 01-10-2013, 07:16 AM

I would be intereseted in hearing about your experiences controlling 1000 iPhones from your network. How is the security and are you able to lock them down to limit personal use in the same way that you could BB's. Aside from being a better user experience for media, how do the employees like the iPhones for email use? And did you have more current models of BB's or were most people still using 3 and 4 year old BB's like most companys these days which really make people hate them even more.

**mikesa_tx** · 01-10-2013, 09:40 AM

Welcome! Glad to see your here at imore. Looking forward to hearing from you.

**juwaack68** · 01-24-2013, 11:47 AM

Thanks for the warm welcomes - and several from old friends, too! I just came back to check on this thread since I didn't get email notifications that anyone replied..... must have something set up wrong in my profile.....