Google will push Gmail and calendar to the native client software on BlackBerrys, PCWorld reports. The Premier and Education editions of Google Apps have also been added to the beta service. The commercial version will be available in July.

The service requires organizations to add a piece of software to their BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), and that software is available today only for the Microsoft Exchange version of BES. The software connects back to Google’s mail servers, rather than the company’s Exchange server, to synchronize mail, contacts and calendar items.

The service steps up Google’s rivalry with Microsoft in the enterprise, but it does have some weaknesses. Initially, calendar items can be synchronized only from the server to the user’s phone. So if a user makes a new calendar entry on their BlackBerry, it won’t be synched back to their online calendar. An upgrade that supports two-way synch should come by the end of the year, said Raju Gulabani, product management director for Google Apps.

[via Yahoo! Tech | image credit]