An Open Letter To Customers | Hacker News Reader

An Open Letter To Customers

app.biz.blackberry.com

The key point in this letter which HN people should be noting is:

> To our valued enterprise customers and partners,

MDM (Mobile Device Management), EMM (Enterprise Mobility Management) BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) is to the enterprise IT department what saas, paas, Xaas is to Hacker News, industry language.

On a separate note I still have no idea why Oracle/HP/IBM haven't bought them, clearly so much opportunity seeing as Fortune 500 have still not settled on an effective way to manage mobile devices,

- Easily (for Sysadmin vs Employee), - Securely (employee privacy vs corporate security) - Cheaply (BYOD)

BES10 is actually pretty robust and has more features than most of its competitors

Thank you for breaking that down. I can't believe that press release had so many acronyms without explanation. Do they expect all customers and potential customers to be able to understand all of that jargon?

By customers, this is targeted at CISOs (Cheif Information Security Officers) and other senior IT decision makers and Sysadmins.

Without being too patronising, this is really really basic jargon for anyone working in the Enterprise IT mobile space - like someone knowing what HTML/CSS/JS stand for/represent in the web dev/design space.

Ah, I appreciate that. When I saw customers I thought it was referring to actual consumers (as a former Blackberry owner, myself).

A more interesting question is why hasn't Google, Microsoft, Samsung or Apple bought them for their patent portfolio. They've been doing mobile for a long time and historically did things that could genuinely be considered innovative. It's even the kind of thing that Intellectual Ventures probably has the budget to pick up.

It won't be long until you say Blackberry phone and people will say "What?"

This company will be a case study in how deep in the sand you can stick your head. You'd think they'd have studied the spectacular downfall of Palm, and prior to that, Iomega, when trying to chart their own course.

It's corporate schizophrenia. So few corporations avoid it. The only ones I can think of in technology are IBM and Motorola. They seem to have been able to reinvent themselves enough times to avoid crapping out entirely. Sure, they aren't the biggest in their fields, but maybe that all consuming pursuit to be the biggest is part of the downfall of other companies.

Motorola actually died, it just limped along in the mobile space until that part was acquired by Google.

Motorola off-loaded their CPU manufacturing, that's now Freescale Semiconductor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freescale_Semiconductor), and ditched their PC business. They're still losing money in mobile so it's likely they would've cratered before long.

Any further information on Iomega's downfall? I used them for their Zipdisks and would love to see read happened. I'm also interested in the downfall of Palm.

Zipdisks were overtaken by CD-R tech, which started out expensive ($2000+ writers, but with $100 readers in most machines) but quickly became too cheap for zip to compete (almost every CD-ROM drive was also a writer by the time DVD took over.)

Actually, I would expect the more likely killer to be USB thumb drives. No need to invest money or space in a drive at all, so they were usable even on your friend's or your university's or your employer's computers. The disc-based systems were woefully fragmented with a lot of confusion over R version RW and + versus - and CD versus DVD. It was more convenient to rewrite data than CDRW (how often do you need to permanently store data? Rewriting is the better use case). And the media was small enough that you thought nothing of taking it everywhere with you (like your keys and wallet). Plus, I would wager that USB thumb drives are more reliable than CDs, given the propensity for cheap CDs to delaminate or get scratched up versus the numerous thumb drives sent through the washing machine in pants pockets and still came out working.

True, but USB sticks didn't become very popular until well after Iomega had stopped being relevant.

The effusive Thom Holwerda of OSNews wrote up a quite long telling (55 pg in the PDF version) of the Palm story not too long ago.

http://www.osnews.com/story/26838/Palm_I_m_ready_to_wallow_n...

Note that you can read the whole thing on the website. The TOC is after his plug for purchasing the PDF.

And someone in the know commented that some of the Android developers are people from the Palm world.

http://www.osnews.com/story/26861/Additional_insights_into_P...

Iomega completely disrupted the removable bulk storage market held by SyQuest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syquest), rendering their rival virtually irrelevant within a few years.

That massive success and complete market domination led to a sense of complacency, and when CD-R and CD-R+W emerged, with 650MB of storage on very inexpensive non-proprietary media, Iomega was slow to react.

The first CD-R burners were VCR-sized devices that required a lot of expertise to operate. They cost $15,000 and ran single-speed burning on to media that cost $15-20 a piece.

This quickly changed, and within a few years the price of media had plunged below a dollar a unit, and 4x and 8x burners were available for a few hundred bucks.

Long after CD-R had displaced Zip disks, Iomega produced a line of mediocre CD-R devices. They didn't succeed, as an internal burner could be purchased for as little as $25 and Iomega's external version was around $300 so as not to cannibalize sales of their flagship Jaz drive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iomega_Jaz), a product that ultimately went nowhere and had near zero adoption.

The other thing that hit at about the same time was the internet. With only dial-up speeds people were forced to use removable media to transfer large files, and Iomega offered a cost-effective solution for that problem at the time. As soon as speeds increased and people could send large amounts of data without having to "sneaker-net" it over, the need for these things was largely eliminated.

"MDM vendors are undoubtedly inviting you to webinars and enticing you to switch off your BES."

They're trying to tell me an actual human typed that sentence?

I think this is a way to reach their target audience and I think it just might make sense. Think of it as them going to their roots. You are not their target audience.

They are done. They STILL have no clue they aren't the center of the universe. Who knows (or cares) what this sentence means:

"We’re serious about multi-platform MDM and even more serious about multi-platform EMM"

> or cares

Go tell CISO/CIO (or Auditor) of a fortune 500 that they don't need to care what company data/emails are on peoples phones/tablets or whether its under the companies control.

Your lack of interest shows that this isn't relevant to you, it would be arrogant to assume the rest of the world doesn't care about it - in the same way lots of people don't care about how lean your startup is or what VC drinks social you went to the other night.

I am an interested person who is reasonably schooled in the art.

You are absolutely right that many people need to care about controlling data/email on peoples devices - and your sentence does a much better job explaining the issue than their letter does.

People that administer enterprise network and security infrastructure, for starters. Who are the target audience of this letter.

This letter is not directed towards consumers.

It's one thing to know and care, but another thing to pull it off. I dealt with RIM/BB not all that long ago on behalf of an M2M prospect and was thoroughly underwhelmed; the QNX team we dealt with was sharp and fully on-point, but I got the sense that RIM was holding them back. In the end, using BB would have increased our hardware BOM by an order of magnitude (literally, they suggested we buy smartphones and use them as the basis of the hardware), so it made zero sense versus a more traditional route.

It's a shame, really. QNX is a fantastic solution supported by a brilliant team, but one that's hobbled to a hardware vendor with zero vision and even less ability to execute.

Enterprises lost the BYOD war ... if you offer SMTPS, POPS and IMAPS as a way for an employee's clients to connect to your infrastructure, you've already decided to allow a connection from their personal devices. Smart enterprises have recognized this, hardened their core network and then taken advantage of the cost reductions offered by BYOD.

What's wrong with it? Does the average consumer understand what it means? No. Is this targeted at them? No. If you saw a post that started,

"Java applet vendors are undoubtedly inviting you to webinars and enticing you to switch off your HTML-based system"

would you throw up your hands and say that the message failed?

The whole letter made perfect sense to me but I managed BES years ago.

Blackberry 10, for me, is the best mobile operating system. Also, writing application for this OS is terribly cool (C++ and Qt !).

So, I believe in BlackBerry.

I totally agree with you. I recently switched from android 4 to blackberry 10 and I couldn't be happier with it. It's an awesome OS, plus the app gap with android/ios is not really terrible (I can find almost all the apps I need in the BB world, and I have the android runtime -which works fine for me- for the others). I guess the majority of bb detractors have never played with BB10 for more than 10 minutes before. I suggest you to do so, you could change your mind ;)

My wife and I are currently trying to decide between the Q10 and the HTC One (we're both renewing contracts and upgrading from Samsung Galaxy Infuse). We're really drawn to the Q10 for the physical keyboard and BB10 looks awesome (we've watched video reviews and played around with a demo model in-store). There's also a little bit of a "Buy Canadian" thing, at least on my part.

But we're leaning more and more towards the HTC One. Our Android apps are guaranteed to work, without any complicated conversion process, missing features, or stability/performance problems. The HTC hardware seems light years ahead of the Q10 (and is actually more powerful than my work laptop). The device seems more "futureproof", especially given Blackberry's uncertain future.

What if they get out of the consumer-level hardware business six months from now (I have memories of my old Sega Dreamcast here)? What if 10.2.1 is the last consumer OS upgrade they ever release and AppWorld collapses and support for Android APKs gets worse and worse as it goes unmaintained? These are devices we're committing to for the next two years, and we can't help feel apprehensive about choosing Blackberry at this point.

In my opinion BlackBerry is just too big and important to fail. It's the only non-american major player, and it's well known for its security and reliability.

Anyway, if you're trying to decide between the Q10 and the HTC One, I think the biggest difference is the keyboard. If you prefer a physical one, just go BB. If you prefer a larger screen to watch pictures, videos and play games, buy the HTC One.

FIY some days ago Nokia gave me a free lumia for development purpose, and while typing on its screen keyboard I really missed the physical one of my Q10. With my BB I can type precisely without watching the keyboard, and I love it, while on touchscreen I feel insecure. Sometimes I'd like to have a bigger screen, but I wouldn't trade the keyboard for that (If you want to watch a movie, tablet are a better choice anyway).

Speaking about apps, as I already said I don't really feel such a huge gap. I have all the apps I usually use, and for the missing ones there is always the android runtime (which runs pretty well and is constantly improving). In addition to that, I feel a greater UI consistency in BB10 native application, compared to iOS and Android ones. You have settings on the top, main bar on the bottom, togglable action bar on the right and menu bar on the left. Imho this is a great value for BB, which is instead missing on Android.

Then, we could speak about swipe based ui, blackberry hub and a lot of things, but I think you already know all I could tell to you.

So, regardless of your final decision, I hope you will be satisfied with your new smartphone. Good luck!

(and sorry for my poor english)

Two sentences in, there are three cryptic acronyms - MDM, BES and BYOD. Apparently the "customers" that the letter was written for are not Blackberry's end users.

Well, yeah. Selling to humans was a side effect of the sad state of the smartphone market pre-iOS/Android.

That would be why the first line is

    To our valued *enterprise* customers

True, but in a far smaller font than the headline "An Open Letter to Customers", which is technicaly the first line of this statment. But hardly good when such confusion is evident, heck BIS was enterprise and BES was consumer, see why people confused with such magical boundaries of consumer.

Bear in mind that the only reason you are reading this is because someone posted it to HN. I imagine they sent it out by e-mail to enterprise customers, and not anyone else.

>* ... heck BIS was enterprise and BES was consumer ...

You've got that flipped around.

Your right - my bad.

MDM - Mobile Device Management

BYOD - Bring Your Own Device

BES - BlackBerry Enterprise... Something?

Server

They most certainly were not! They were written for CIO's and the like.

For the record:

MDM - Mobile Device Management - a thing to integrate management of a companies cell phones

BES - BlackBerry Enterprise Server - the MDM made by BlackBerry

BYOD - Bring Your Own Device - The practice of employees using personal cell phones for company business. The company deploys some set of apps and services onto the device which allows them some measure of control over it, and the employee gets to use a mobile device that they are comfortable with.

I knew those but EMM tripped me up - any idea?

Enterprise Mobility Management

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_Mobility_Management

Enterprise Messaging Management?

Googling reveals Enterprise Mobility Management.

Enterprise Mobility Management.

From Wikipedia: "Enterprise mobility management (EMM) is the set of people, processes and technology focused on managing the increasing array of mobile devices, wireless networks, and related services to enable broad use of mobile computing in a business context."

Yikes.

"Enterprise mobility management (EMM) is ... processes ... focused on managing ... mobile devices ... in a business context."

If you ignore 90% of the words in that sentence, it becomes much more understandable.

My first day at my first job after college I recieved a manual labeled: TLA's & FLA's.

Big companies are just that way.

Rumors of our death are greatly exaggerated. They are not rumors! We failed to sell and we have nothing new to offer.

But in case you still think we have a shot, here's another meandering 720 degree tailspin in the form of an open letter.

Can someone explain to me why BlackBerry gets so much negativity for trying to regain relevance, whereas there's much more positive thoughts for startups trying to pivot to do the same? It always seems like HN has a lot more love for the latter than the former.

I always wished BlackBerry would adopt Android operating system. It desperately needs some enterprise hardened secure version with good VPN. Also I really miss decent Android phone with Qwerty keyboard.

You can run Android apps on BB10. But there would be no point in running Android, it would be a big step backwards security wise.

Not to mention that Google don't do Android out of the goodness of their hearts. They want to make phone handsets commoditized with all the cool stuff in the software and in their "cloud". That's not a market you want to be in as a manufacturer - just ask IBM who were driven out of PCs, a market they created...

I read that Android support in BB10 is not so great.

Most of Android components are open sourced. There are versions of Android which strips out Google stuff. For example Facebook released their phone which runs on Android. There is even alternative OS (sailfish) with similar architecture, which runs Android apps just fine.

The problem is that BlackBerry tries to be manufacturer. They do everything by themselves. Instead they should focus on services and existing standards.

But so do Apple and they are wildly successful. BlackBerry's security model relies on integration of the OS with the hardware in such a way that they'd need to rewrite the Android kernel anyway to keep the same benefits.

Facebook did not release a phone. They released a home screen/app launcher for Android. HTC did release a phone with it preloaded, which bombed (because move fast and break things works better on the web than on phones).

Data point: I sideload Android apps onto my BB Z30 all the time, and it's less than five minutes from start to finish. I feel like I have the best of both worlds.

Moving 100% to Android would mean a partial write off of the QNX purchase but they have alternatives such as supporting Android side by side via virtualization. People will have the best of the two worlds. I think it is impossible for them to attract developers and fill an app store in the short term.

Android is a race to the bottom for everyone who isn't Google (controls the software side) or Samsung (fabs the key silicon).

or Microsoft (patent payments).

I skimmed thru and this caught my eye "Our EMM customer base is much larger than any of the other vendors in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Mobile Device Management – and is growing."

Not having heard of this "Magic Quadrant", I find it hard to see how the average consumer could take that seriously.

As far as I know, those Gartner "magic quadrants" are fairly well-known in the circles of really large corporations. Which is apparently their target market.

I'm sure the average consumer wouldn't take that seriously -- however, this is not meant for the average consumer. This letter is definitely trying to appeal to business IT managers, and they sure love Gartner's magic quadrants. (They also enjoy whitepapers about best practices for implementing thin enterprise BYOD methodologies.)

The Gartner Magic Quadrants are treated very highly by senior management who often don't trust vendors or their own staff. They tend to be vacuous and of awful quality - I've started keeping historical ones so that at some point I'll be able to show how terrible Gartner are at predicting the future. But a surprising number of purchasing decisions are made on the back of these magic quadrants.

Here is the link to the 2013 Magic Quadrant for Mobile Device Management Software that is referenced in the post: http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-1FRG59X&c...

I get that this is addressed to a specific audience, and it isn't me - but I don't understand how their position there is something to mention at all. They're a "niche player" apparently, where in this context that means they have a low ability to execute and incomplete vision.

"BlackBerry is positioned in the Niche Players quadrant and should only be considered for BlackBerry management or for cross-platform if iOS is needed and BES 10 has been purchased." sure doesn't sound reassuring either.

Not having heard of this "Magic Quadrant", I find it hard to see how the average consumer could take that seriously.

On an average day, I use software/libraries called Grunt, Mocha, Dust, Cheerio... and those are just NPM modules. Every industry has it's fair share of stupid names, they just don't seem so stupid when you use them all the time.

Huh... I hear about it every month or two. It's a pretty popular report Gartner puts out.

Well, that is certainly an enterprise URL.

Sounds like they're going to become a niche company even more so than they already were.

It's a multi-billion dollar niche.

They are losing money hand over fist. http://www.cnbc.com/id/101065804

That's a September article, and a little context is in order. The writedown was in inventory and not cash. It was for product that had only been in the retail channel for a few months. Good product like the Z10. It was a strategic move to lower the price of the corporation so it could be taken private.

They were trying to make BlackBerry as affordable as they could, as quickly as they could.

TL; DR we're not dead yet!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh8mNjeuyV4

This is an open letter to enterprise customers. A bit of a misleading title.

they don't have many non-enterprise customers anymore zing

Well, those are the only customers that BB has ever really served, so it's appropriate.

Isn't this the 2nd or 3rd open letter to customers within a month ?

This is the first I can recall from the new CEO.

"In short, reports of our death are greatly exaggerated."

A tech company saying this is not a great sign.

^ death, just not 'greatly exaggerated'

Hail Mary

What security? Their crypto was shitty. Has it gotten better?

I thought it was pretty good. Have you managed to break into a blackberry and extract the user's info without it being wiped out?

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