BlackBerry continues its rehabilitation by announcing the formation of a new business unit, and the hiring of a leader to guide it.
The new business unit is BlackBerry Technology Solutions, or BTS. Its new president is Dr. Sandeep Chennakeshu, who takes on the new responsibility immediately.
The BTS unit rides herd over BlackBerry's technology assets, which include QNX (embedded software), Project Ion (Internet of Things application platform), Certicom (cryptography applications), and Paratek (RF antenna tuning). Mixed in with the bunch is BlackBerry's extensive patent portfolio.
Dr. Chennakeshu's background is deeply embedded in research, product development, IP creation/licensing and general management in the wireless, electronics and semiconductor industry for over 25 years. Included in that background are stints as president of Ericsson Mobile Platforms and CTO of Sony-Ericsson. He is listed as an inventor on 73 patents, and is a Fellow if the IEEE.
BlackBerry Executive Chairman and CEO John Chen said, "I am very pleased that Sandeep has joined BlackBerry to lead BTS. Combining all of out technology assets and our broad global portfolio of over 44,000 patents into a single business unit led by Sandeep will create operational synergies and new revenue streams, furthering our turnaround strategy."
Chen described QNX, Certicom and Paratek as "strategic and technically innovative assets with significant potential to address the much wider global markets for secure, reliable communications and embedded applications, and Project Ion creates an application platform that enables secure and collaborative machine-to-machine communication required by the growing number of end-to-end, Internet of Things applications."
Paratek is a Nashua, N.H., company that was acquired by BlackBerry. It designs and manufactures adaptive RF front-end component solutions for mobile wireless applications.
Certicom, also a BlackBerry subsidiary, is a Mississauga, Ontario-based produces hardware and software cryptography solutions for companies and governments worldwide. They own over 350 patents and claim to be experts in public key infrastructure implementations.
Another BlackBerry holding, QNX, is an Ottawa, Ontario-based provider of operating systems, development tools and professional services for connected embedded systems.
It is easy to see that BlackBerry would need a business unit to pull all of these proprietary and acquired technologies and patents under one roof, to maximize their assets in contributing to BlackBerry going forward and to maintain control of these company's independent activities and research. Asset and patent protection will also be a key responsibility of the new BlackBerry business unit.
