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BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365 enters open beta

Many moons ago RIM and Microsoft announced their intent to get BlackBerrys and Office 365 to play nice, but the exact availability has been up in the air, saying only that it was coming in 2012. Today though RIM are launching an open beta program if you truly want to live among the clouds.

What exactly is on offer? Well, you’ll be able to access Microsoft Exchange Online email, calender, and organizer data from your BlackBerry, while proving some security and peace of mind for administrators too. They’ll have access to a web-based console so that they can properly provision and manage BlackBerrys, and the end user will have some control too, being able to remotely lock or wipe the device in case it becomes lost or stolen.

Of course, what’s being made available today is a beta, and with that comes pitfalls. You’ll have to accept the fact that there might be downtime and that reliability won’t exactly be close to that magic 99.9% number.

The open beta launches today, with the full service expected to be available early 2012. You can sign up to the beta here.

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