Best of WES: Top 10 BlackBerry Products and Services

Research In Motion's (RIM) Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES) is the largest BlackBerry event of the year, and as such, all the heavies in the space--from BlackBerry administrators to analysts and pundits, as well as power-users and unabashed CrackBerry addicts--come out to see the latest and greatest the BlackBerry world as to offer.

Slideshow: 15 nifty BlackBerry apps for IT pros

CIO.com was on the scene in Orlando this week for WES, and I spent hours in the trenches BlackBerry Solutions Showcase speaking with various vendors about their newest wares. I came across a plethora of noteworthy products and services, too, and though many more deserve mention, I've culled my 10 favorite offerings, listed in alphabetical order, for folks who couldn't make the show.

And if you still haven't seen enough by the time you make it through the list, check out my Best of WES from last year: "WES 2008: My Five Favorite New BlackBerry Products and Services."

1) Cellcrypt

Cellcrypt Mobile for BlackBerry is the very first product that encrypts BlackBerry voice traffic--phone calls--and though it's not exactly cheap at US$1000 per user per year, the piece of mind of knowing your calls aren't being tapped could be invaluable depending on your line of work.

Simon Bransfield-Garth, Cellcrypt's CEO, says exploits meant to tap into BlackBerry phone calls are entirely possible, and though we haven't really seen any in recent days, it could take just one high-profile attack to raise public awareness. Cellcrypt may be the first to offer BlackBerry voice encryption, but I think you'll start seeing more products like it in the near future.

Read "Cellcrypt for BlackBerry Encrypts, Secures Cellular Voice Conversations" for more on the company's new BlackBerry offering.

2) Chalk Media

I knew Chalk Media was a company I'd want to keep an eye on when I first talked with the Chalk folks at WES 2008, and it looks as though RIM had similar feelings; the BlackBerry-maker acquired Chalk late last year.

The Mobile chalkboard from Chalk Media is an application suite that lets corporations and organizations quickly create and distribute media-rich "pushcasts," to staffers' or customers' BlackBerry devices. Such pushcasts can include PowerPoint slides, surveys, call or e-mail requests, video and more. Media chalkboard also enables IT administrators to secure and track the delivery of content, i.e., determine who's consuming what content. And Chalk's pushcasts are accessible without wireless connectivity, because they're pushed onto users' devices whenever there's network coverage and stored until the content is needed.

The product is particularly interesting because it puts the BlackBerry media player, which is typically considered a consumer-oriented feature, to work as a corporate tool.

More information on Chalk is available on the company's website.

3) Giesecke & Devrient GmbH

You've probably heard of traditional smart cards and smart card readers that enable organizations to grant secure access to corporate resources to authorized parties with the appropriate card credentials. In fact, RIM actually makes its own BlackBerry Smartcard Reader, which is about the size of an average BlackBerry but significantly lighter.