According to the agreement, integration and after sale services will be provided by HCL Infosystem’s enterprise distribution partners. Furthermore, HCL Infosystems will also provide value-added services such as technical support and consulting, in addition to selling and supporting BlackBerry´s enterprise software portfolio,
“By working with an established partner like HCL Infosystems in India, we aim to create growth for our partners while giving our customers wider access to our leading suite of enterprise solutions with world-class support, helping organisations advance their mobility strategies,” said Richard McLeod, Vice President, Global Channels at BlackBerry, in a statement.
The partnership is expected to strengthen HCL’s Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) alliances with Fujitsu and others by significantly expanding their enterprise software portfolio with BlackBerry solutions. Also, customers will have access to HCL Infosystems’ IT deployment support and integration capabilities that will help them to migrate easily or consolidate their Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) investments, an area where BlackBerry faces huge competition from the US-based virtualization giant VMware.
Refusal to shut down its hardware sales has led the Canadian smartphone maker to take to Android-powered smartphones, abandoning its own OS. However, due to the continuous stall in its smartphone sales owing to a still competition from Apple and Samsung, the management is perhaps aiming to counter the losses using software and services as its new engine of growth.
With this partnership, it is inevitable that Blackberry is aiming to expand its reach beyond consumers to new segments such as the small and medium enterprises and startups, as a revival strategy to rebuild its business with focus on enterprise sales.
