BlackBerry Analyst Summit 2019

Had a busy week in the West Coast, first with BlackBerry for their annual Analyst Summit in San Ramon and then rushing over to San Francisco for Slack Frontiers. I was tweeting and blogging throughout the two days at Frontiers but decided to hold off on my comments from the BlackBerry event since I was not sure what was on NDA. I've reviewed my notes and here are my key takeaways. If you're curious about what other attendees were talking about check out Twitter with the hashtag #BlackBerryTrust.

  • BlackBerry has undergone a significant transformation in the last five years. CEO John Chen opened the event and provided an update on the company's transition to software and services.
  • The company has made several strategic acquisitions over the last five years that support its positioning in cyber security the Internet of Things for connected devices like cars.
  • BlackBerry is targeting verticals with a solutions-based approach that brings together several products in its portfolio. 
I had the opportunity to talk to company executives and review several product demos including BlackBerry Voice Services, which provide secure enterprise-grade deployment that will allow organizations to deploy productivity applications over devices such as Amazon's Echo using Alexa. Speech technologies in the enterprise is a topic

I've been covering for several years and I have to say that I am quite impressed with BlackBerry's progress. The company is addressing security and access challenges that until now have limited the adoption of speech technologies in the enterprise. BlackBerry shared how they address different scenarios including accessing corporate resources such as calendar, email and team collaboration on personal devices. I will be following up with the company and posting an update with more details on BlackBerry Voice Services.

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