Twilio, which is best known for enabling companies to build SMS-based communication services, shared yesterday during its earnings call that Uber, a customer who uses Twilio to connect drivers and passengers, was “changing the way they do messaging” in order to reduce expenses. While SMS, aka text messaging, may be well-known, it can be costly since you pay a platform provider, an aggregator, and a carrier to deliver a message. On top of that, you aren’t guaranteed it is delivered.
Uber’s realization is unfortunate for Twilio but underscores the value BlackBerry is bringing to market with an IP-based communication platform that is not only the most secure communications platform available – but also super simple, reliable, scalable and cost-efficient. If you are an enterprise that has customers or operations in more than one country, an IP-based communication platform such as BBM Enterprise SDK is the way to go.
Released in February, the platform opens up the powerful and proven BBM Enterprise communications service to developers and ISVs looking to embed communication services into their Android and iOS apps. Here are five key advantages BBM Enterprise SDK holds over old-school services such as SMS:
Enterprise-Grade Security with BlackBerry’s Renowned NOC: BlackBerry’s NOC is globally accessible and provides built-in redundancies to ensure optimal performance, flexibility, QoS and availability for products being built for mass scale.
Faster Time to Market: By leveraging BlackBerry’s comprehensive, secure communications framework for mobile applications and services, developers can focus more on what matters most versus worrying about the complexities of developing secure messaging capabilities and an IT infrastructure.
Greater Scalability: Developers can help guard against unforeseen spikes in usage that may affect service availability through a secure, hosted cloud, all without having to deploy a complex and costly infrastructure.
Reduced Costs: Enterprises can avoid upfront investments in hardware infrastructure by utilizing BBM Enterprise’s cloud-based model, as well as control operational costs with an affordable subscription-based per-user licensing model (as opposed to the potentially-spiraling costs of SMS).
Versatility: Our cloud-based Communications-Platform-as-a-Service (CPaaS) supports voice and video communications, not just simple text messaging.
Since announcing the platform for developers, we have seen great interest and recently shared that health informatics startup, Oculys, is using BBM Enterprise SDK to take patient care to the cloud. Oculys is building communication features into its app used by doctors and nurses to collaborate by sharing photos, video conferencing, and more.
Enterprises need ever-faster, secure solutions. BBM Enterprise SDK is a modern, scalable and cost-efficient upgrade over text messaging and is a key component of our overall BlackBerry Secure platform, which secures, connects, mobilizes, and ultimately drives the Enterprise of Things.
The BBM Enterprise SDK is available for Android and iOS here (developers will need to have an account on the community and request to be added to the private area for this release). To learn more, please contact us at BBMSDK@BlackBerry.com or visit blackberry.com/enterprise/bbm-enterprise-sdk.
About Marty Beard
Marty Beard (martyjbeard @ Twitter) is Chief Operating Officer at BlackBerry. He is responsible for leading cross-functional operations, including Marketing, Strategic and Application Partnering, Pricing, Corporate Support and Quality, eCommerce Sales and Security Evangelism. Marty previously served as Chairman and CEO of LiveOps, Inc., a software and services provider of cloud applications for customer service. He was also President of Sybase 365, a mobile messaging and mobile commerce unit of Sybase, Inc., and Vice President for eCommerce at Oracle Corp. He has a B.A. from UC Berkeley and an MBA from Georgetown University.
