free sync to blackerry without bes

[alto]

Sorry if this has been posted and answered before, my searching has turned up very little.

We have network edition and soon will have a lot of blackberry users who will need to sync email and calendar.

We do not have blackberry enterprise server and do not want it.

With budgets being tight we do not want to spend any extra supporting these blackberry users.

Is there any java client I can install on the blackberry which will sync for free?

Thanks for any help

[Klug]

No.

For free on the BB side, you can use the desktop app to sync with Outlook (but that's more expensive on ZCS side and it's not OTA at all).

The cheapest if you want to keep the BB is AstraSync.

The overall cheapest is to trash the BB and replace them by ActiveSync compliant phones.
Even when buying them outside of "renewal plans" or "new line", it's cheaper (over a couple of years).

[y@w]

Depending upon the model of BB you have, you can use the Zimbra J2ME client. It doesn't provide "sync" to the native apps on the BB, but you can access your data from the device.

[Klug]

True.

Or the mobile client through the integrated browser (if any).

[y@w]

I've also seen some threads about Funambol. I am not familiar with it, but that might be something to check out too.

[adonis1976]

Funambol works great. Thats what we use. The network license cost and mobile license cost didn't scale very well in my company.

[alto]

Thank you for all the suggestions. We are going to snatch the blackberry and throw it out the window when the users are not looking. Then replace them with Nokia E63 and mail for exchange.