Sandeep Chennakeshu has been at BlackBerry since August of last year as an employee, but before that he started analysing BlackBerry in September 2013.
Chennakeshu spent about three months analysing BlackBerry, followed by six months of restructuring, before he finally took over the new division called BlackBerry Technology Solutions (BTS).
In an interview with ETTelecom, Chennakeshu discussed the BTS, Cryptography, BlackBerry’s patent portfolio and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Chennakeshu confirmed that BlackBerry currently has 40,000 patents which they license:
“We have QNX, Certicom which is cryptography, RF antenna tuning, IoT and then we have basically the patent portfolio that we licence. We have 40,000 patents which we license. So, this is kind of a new business. “
Discussing BlackBerry’s IoT system he states:
“Our IoT system can be used across many applications, we can use them in hospitals, and we can use it for a much wide variety of applications. It is completely scalable and its footprint is worldwide, secure, private and scalable. Today, we are focusing on these two because of the business focal point.”
Chennakeshu also restated that BlackBerry are still very much interested in India and that is one of the reasons for his current visit to the country:
“India is a big country. It has a population of what 1.3 billion. It is going to grow, every industrial nation has a good potential and so does India. India has 240 million Internet users and has good scope for business to grow and maintain in such manner. I have come to India with the potential to understand if these businesses would partner me. I am a technologist and I like inventing things, I want to know if there is a solution I can provide from all the way back in America, but for that I need partners who would tailor it to suit the needs. So, one of my purposes for the visit is to understand who would be interested.”
It is clear that Chennakeshu still has a major role to play at BlackBerry. You can read the full interview here.
