Expert: DebiN - 8/14/2011

Question
Being in sales, my personal phone serves me well as I use my calander for everything "me" work, play etc. And my phones contacts are just that, mine. For years this has worked great. (I don't want to put my company email server on personal BBerry. I don't trust our IT guy and don't want him snooping into all areas of my personal phone,clendar, browser,emails,SMS etc.)

My options at work were two-fold: add work BES server to MY phone and expense the bill, or port MY number onto THEIR BBerry. The IT guy made a big fuss that I didn't choose either option. So my only option like many is to carry both their BBerry with its number AND my personal BBerry with my number. The only thing i use on their phone is reading emails. The calendar is blank, no SMS, and even though it is filled with hundreds of work & customer contact info I NEVER call from it either. In fact, I have my work phone forwarded to my personal one.

On the new 2011 blackberrys (Bold 9900, Apollo Curve, etc) (OS ver 7), RIM has created a new feature called "Blakberry Balance". I understand that you can put corp BES email on a personal blackberry and it COMPLETELY builds a wall between corp email and the rest of the personal phone. That is great but....

Question1:
Will it still require my IT guy to set a few parameters on HIS end into the server to use Blackberry Balance? If so,than I am sunk because I would never trust him to do this, or not undo it if he initially did so. I am hoping that "Blackberry Balance" will only require the settings to be performed or set up on MY end.

Question 2:
Also, will it allow me to disable exchange server sync of my blackberry's native calander and contacts. So in effect, the ONLY work related push/pull on my phone will be email, nothing else.

Question 3:
WIth my current situation of simply forwarding my verison BBerry work phone # calls to my SPrint BBerry, doest my IT guy and/or verison have ANY means of accessing my personal phone info?

Answer
BlackBerry Balance will still require your IT guy to be involved. Anything relating to the BES involves your IT guy, so I don't think this will be the thing for you based on the information you have provided about your desires to keep things separate, etc.

If you did go this route for some reason, yes, you can prevent exchange from synching your calendar and contacts. That can be done today.

Your IT guy has absolutely 100% no way ofr seeing anything related to personal email. No question about that at all. He wouldn't be able to see it if you were on his BlackBerry either. They can only view corporate email. Hope this helps.