RIM plugging into your business' PBX

RIM has announced its BlackBerry Mobile Voice System (MVS), which promises to make the BlackBerry smart phone an extension of an enterprise's PBX system.

At its annual user conference, the Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES), RIM said MVS will enable access to PBX functionality through a "new intuitive menu interface" and allow users to have one "Reach Me Anywhere" phone number. Desk phone functions such as transfer, park and extension dialling will also be made possible through the system.

Included in the system are the MVS client itself, MVS connectors (a part of BlackBerry Enterprise Server) and the Ascendent Voice Mobility Suite, which allows secure authentication of PBXs. RIM also noted that routing calls through a corporate PBX allows logging or recording for compliance purposes.

Also at WES, RIM announced a plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio, letting developers use the .NET programming environment to create applications for BlackBerrys. This follows a recent announcement about new BlackBerry programming interfaces for developers geared towards the Java environment.

Mike Lazaridis, president and co-chief executive at RIM, said: "This new developer tool meets the needs of the .NET developer community, as well as enterprise customers, by enabling the development of BlackBerry applications within the familiar framework of Visual Studio.

"It leverages existing skill sets, as well as existing investments, in the BlackBerry platform."

David Meyer writes for ZDNet UK