BlackBerry to Expand Global IoT Network with New Centre of Excellence in Hyderabad

Indulge me for just a moment as I regale you with news of the latest expansion from BlackBerry, a brand once synonymous with mobile phones, but now making strides in the security software and services industry. The company is now expanding its global software innovation network to Hyderabad, with a brand new IoT center of excellence, engineering and innovation.

This new division will be the second-largest IoT branch of BlackBerry worldwide, second only to the company’s headquarters in Canada. By 2023, it is expected to host over 100 software engineers in a range of technology positions, including senior management, technical project management, product engineering, cloud software development, integration, and service delivery.

According to Mattias Eriksson, president of BlackBerry IoT, the expansion will help the company “continue rapid growth as an IoT software leader, especially in the automotive sector.” It is also a significant milestone in BlackBerry’s ongoing investment in skills and innovation and underscores the importance of India as a home to world-class software innovators, he said in a statement on the new IoT COE in Hyderabad on March 15.

Recruitment for embedded software engineers has already begun for this center, with a focus on building the next generation of software-defined vehicles and advancing innovation in other areas of the Internet of Things (IoT). The teams will be responsible for innovation, embedded software product development, and engineering services, using the BlackBerry QNX software development platform to design and accelerate the development of systems. The QNX Accelerate initiative will be included in this effort, offering QNX in the Cloud to speed up product development and reduce time to market for a variety of industries, including automotive, medical devices, industrial controls, robotics, aerospace, defense, and heavy machinery.

The BlackBerry IVY software development is also planned to roll out later in 2023, bringing developers and OEMs with operations in India closer to the innovation cycle, offering access to benefits such as optimized data processing using on-vehicle machine learning, the company said. BlackBerry QNX is already embedded in 215 million vehicles worldwide, in production with 45 different OEMs and all seven auto tier-1 suppliers globally.

India is a critical market for local and global manufacturers in the automotive and IoT sectors, particularly in Hyderabad, with its ecosystem of engineering talent. This new facility will enable BlackBerry IoT to co-develop and co-innovate more closely with its customers and partners based in India, Mr. Eriksson said.

The announcement comes ahead of BlackBerry’s annual TechForum India event, set to take place in Bengaluru on March 29, where the company is expected to unveil plans to scale up operations and meet growing demand for its embedded software solutions and engineering services, both in India and worldwide.