GWAVA Makes Archiving BlackBerry Text Messages Fast and Simple

"Apart from voice, texting is the most popular method of mobile communication, so addressing associated compliance issues is of paramount concern for organizations that issue BlackBerry smartphones to their employees," said Charles Taite, CTO of GWAVA. "This simple and fast form of communication has become a vital business tool used by virtually everyone with a mobile phone. Retain provides the means for organizations running BlackBerry Enterprise Server to ensure that they can collect and audit all their mobile text communications, not just email."

Unlike email messages that pass through a mail server making them easy to archive and audit, text messages are sent directly from one device to another over the networks of wireless service providers, making archiving and auditing messages extremely challenging for IT departments. Combined with the need to comply with archiving regulations, this complexity has forced many organizations to shut off text messaging functionality on BlackBerry devices. Retain for BlackBerry Enterprise Server not only enables comprehensive archiving and auditing, its clientless solution can be installed in less than 30 minutes, making Retain the fastest and easiest way to bring an entire enterprise deployment of BlackBerry devices into regulatory compliance.

"IT departments racing to meet compliance mandates often have difficult compromises to make," said Kathryn Weldon, Principal Analyst for Enterprise Mobility at Current Analysis. "Text messaging may be viewed as an essential business tool by employees, but IT departments that need to install software on hundreds or thousands of devices may opt instead to switch off such messaging functions. GWAVA Retain for BlackBerry addresses this dilemma head-on by developing a clientless, server-side archiving solution that installs quickly and brings an entire enterprise BlackBerry deployment into compliance, saving IT departments time and expense while eliminating end-user tampering."

The Retain solution is installed directly on the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and requires no client software for the BlackBerry device. Without a client, Retain does not use any memory or processing resources on the device, eliminating any impact on the device's performance and making the solution tamper-proof by individual end-users. What's more, the server-side solution eliminates the need for IT departments to "touch" every BlackBerry device deployed, repaired or replaced within the enterprise, saving time and expense.

Retain works on both the common short message service (SMS) text messages used for mobile phone-to-mobile phone messaging, as well as the BlackBerry-specific personal identification number (PIN) form of text messages that allow one BlackBerry user to send a message directly to another BlackBerry. The Retain agent collects the information contained in the countless files of SMS, PIN and phone log information and imports them into a SQL database. With its impressive search capabilities, Retain helps organizations create comprehensive audit trails and quickly and easily access this information for any necessary investigations.