What do you put the growing popularity of Fiberlink’s products, such as MaaS360, in the UK down to?
Our product has very good workflows. It’s very easy to use and very intuitive. We’re also very, very fast. We can set you up in a production environment within 20-20 minutes. Nobody else can do that. Also, our pace of play is very good. In this market pace is everything and with change management issues with on prem type providers we’ve found that we can really leverage speed and provide zero day capabilities.
Almost everything in the Fiberlink portfolio is developed in house so our architecture is our own technology. We have development Bangalore as well as in the States. I think on our roadmap what you’re going to see is three distinct silos of development. You’re going to have continued development around the mobility device management themes. You’re going to have developments around applications and security. Then we’ll also have integrations with device manufacturers that extend capabilities.
Also, historically, here in Europe, the cloud has not been as well received but now I think in the past year there are more and more people adopting cloud solutions.
Why do you think it’s not been as well received here?
Security concerns, but also its innate to the culture of Europe. In Europe it’s all about data protection. People are very conscious of the legislative aspects that they have to abide by for security, especially for certain verticals, such as healthcare. There are different restrictions depending on which industry you’re in. Also, country to country, you have more concerns. In Germany, they’re a little bit more focussed on security of their data. In Switzerland they don’t want data to leave Switzerland.
How difficult does securing data become for companies when they’re working globally?
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The interesting thing is our technology is FISMA certified. We’re FIPS compliant. We’re waiting for the new CSG criteria to be released so we can become compliant with that. Being 100% cloud we realise that we have to get those approvals in order to help us be effective. But we don’t really house any data. So we’re not in the critical email path. We do our bit on the devices, we authenticate, we push applications, manage whitelists, quarantine. But then we get out of the way and all data flow occurs between the device and corporate level.
Do you get most of your business from companies approaching you with their data loss concerns or more from the promotion of your products?
I think it’s mostly from us promoting. Our brand probably isn’t as prominent as other brands so we’re out trying to evangelise our brand. If people try our product they really like it. We do very well once we’re involved in the evaluation process. Right now, some of our bigger customers in teh UK are Network Rail, TFL and BBC. Globally we have a good customer base so we deal with some extremely large deployments.
What are the main security trends you’re noticing?
Obviously, there’s the malware threat. You have multiple concerns for different device paths. Android’s a little more open than Apple so you have different concerns. Really, for me, when you talk about security, it’s all about data. What’s your policy on controlling data? What’s your risk posture on losing data? And that’s pretty common around the globe. So different sectors have different risk posture and set their policy accordingly.
Now BYOD changes that. How can we containerise the data and more importantly give the user the native device experience because the user is buying the device that he wants to use for that device experience. How can we then still manage and control?
We just launched a really neat product, a secure productivity suite. What that allows us to do is, without any hardware or anything, create a dual persona on the device. So we can set up a corporate persona, just allowing the company to control data and applications within that data. And also utilise the native experience on the device.
How has the NSA and Prism hitting the headlines increased interest in your solutions?
We’re growing almost 25% quarter on quarter growth. I think the announcements about the NSA are important, only because they enhance the need for data security. Those aspects will always help our industry.
Also, the continued legislative aspects about data loss. If loss occurs, you have to have a procedural way to track it, report it, know what data was where, so the continued legislation is probably is probably more relevant to our business than headlines about the NSA.
* IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Fiberlink Communications
