By Editor
The buzz around the audacious BlackBerry Passport perhaps illustrates the best the renewed interest behind this mobile pioneer. We caught up with Nader Henein, Regional Director MEA for BlackBerry to shed light on these developments
BlackBerry is in the middle of a renaissance. What is behind this momentum?
Our business is growing exceptionally well. After John Chen, our new CEO, took over last year, we’ve refocused on our core domain which is the enterprise and our enterprise customers. We’ve focused on devices that bring more productivity into the businesses and we’ve been rewarded. A lot of businesses that walked away at some point are welcoming us back. We are launching BES 12, which is our new version of the enterprise server and that is going to bring dozens of additional features for the enterprise focused on getting work done securely, speedily and getting more efficiency out of your day. This has been our core from the very beginning when our co-founders started the business. It brought down the complexity of having secured mail to the simplicity of being able to send and receive an SMS. Right now we are going back to those same lines like government, banking, finance, Insurance, MNCs etc.
How are you making sure that partners are part of this revival?
We’ve seen a lot of partners approaching us telling us they would like to resell and distribute our solutions. We are setting up partners in Africa in countries like Nigeria and Kenya to add to the resellers we already have as well more partners in the Middle East and Africa to be able to cover for the amount of demand we are seeing. In the UAE, our partners include EMS and Axiom while across Africa we have partners such as Dimension Data etc. as well as Ingram Micro as one of our biggest partners globally. This speaks of our commitment and ability to deliver.
This region is very important for BlackBerry-you can see in our product launches. Whenever we do, we launch simultaneously with Dubai as the regional hub with other places such as London and Canada.
Discuss the overall enterprise mobile management market and BlackBerry’s position in it
We are by far the largest enterprise mobility management solutions provider in the market. We have massive deployments all over the world. One customer for instance is the US Department of Defence with over 600,000 devices managed by the Blackberry enterprise server, testament to our scalability and security. Today we have over 100,000 deployments today of the BlackBerry enterprise solutions. That number is larger than the next three competitors combined.
But we are not stopping there. Whenever we speak to customers, we ask the question, “How does the road map look like?” “This is your current product today, but how does your product look like in six months?” This is because only a company that is dedicated to mobility will show you depth in that a roadmap. Unlike us, mobility is not our major competitor’s core focus.
Discuss how your device business, epitomized by the new passport, ties to the overall enterprise mobile management solutions
Within BlackBerry we have multiple Silos. One silo is the device business, the other one is the enterprise mobility management, another one is the solutions business such as BBM with the last one being QNX, the operating system that BlackBerry 10 runs on. QNX is deployed in many other places such as BMW and Porsche cars, GE medical equipment, etc.
So when you deploy a BlackBerry device inside an enterprise and you manage it through a BlackBerry enterprise server, the experience the user gets is second to none. If you look at other solutions and how they manage iOS, Android or Windows devices, it’s like making them do something they are not built to do. However, for us because everything is built under one roof and you get the native experience to everything. All the mails, contacts, address, book, notes, tasks etc., are all in the same place whereas with other solutions you have to keep switching from work to the personal. With BlackBerry for instance, you see all the appointments for the day, both work and personal on the calendar in one interface. The new BlackBerry Passport fits in perfectly with our overall enterprise strategy.
User Experience is of course central to any mobility function. Is UX a major consideration for BlackBerry and its devices?
The beauty of the enterprise solution is that it allows you to, from one interface, pull applications from various app stores and push them to the device and it’s all very simple. You install our solutions and to our server allows you to mobilize all the applications internally and then offer those applications selectively to either all enterprise users or to some of them within groups.
However, our enterprise mobile management solutions are not just available on BlackBerry with support for iOS and Android devices with upcoming BES 12 supporting Windows Mobile as well. Our strategy is to always support all the major operating systems which give you 98% market coverage.
BlackBerry devices are also popular consumer device. How does the company leverage enterprise-grade solutions to build a stronger consumer base?
The most important thing for most people is security; and we do security properly. On the enterprise side we have built military-grade security into the device and the consumer ends up benefitting from those as well. What is called security in the enterprise is referred to as privacy on the consumer end. Both are equally important for us. This can be seen in the way we design our solutions. BBM for instance is not based on your phone number or email but on a unique number or BB ID such that if you want to connect with somebody, it’s an opt-in proposition. Other messaging solutions scan your contact numbers and then connect you with people that you may not necessarily want to connect with. All the information on our devices is also secured with features such as parental controls built in. We also have solutions such as BlackBerry Protect so you can track the device and wipe it clean remotely from a web browser.
What is BlackBerry’s own road map for the next year?
Over the next one year, I see us expanding the current base that we have by driving more depth into existing customers by getting them to mobilize more than their mails. The Middle East region is still in its early stages for mobility adoption. Initially customers adopt mobility to get mails, tasks, notes, calendar and other basis on their device. The second stage is starting to mobilize applications such as CRM. After that, you start looking at small groups and mobilizing their requirements within the enterprise. We consequently want to start moving the traditional mobility to those mature phases.