Samsung is kickstarting a drive into the enterprise market in an attempt to make its B2B business worth over $100bn by 2020, a quarter of its entire anticipated revenue.
Graham Long, Samsung UK business division VP, told journalists at a briefing yesterday that enterprises in the UK and around the world are gradually getting more interested in what Samsung has to offer the B2B market.
Long said: "Enterprise for Samsung is increasingly important and increasingly relevant. What we are seeing from the [B2B] market is a shift towards consumerisation. We’re seeing people wanting to utilise their own devices in the workplace, and we’re also seeing in many different areas, people are looking to tie different forms of technology together.
"Historically, from a B2B perspective, Samsung has been very strong in the display market. We also have a successful printing business. But what we’re seeing from our customers is that they want us to show them how to link all their different technologies together."
A lovely view of the Heron… errr… Salesforce Tower from the breakfast briefing with Samsung.
The breakfast briefing focused on Samsung’s ‘The Future of Work’ whitepaper, in association with Ovum, in preparation for a Samsung Futurescape event to be held on July 2. The report says that the scale of the smartphone market, which is set to reach a global installed base of three billion devices by 2017, is driving consumerisation of IT and making the workplace the point of convergence for multiple device types.
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Long said: "This is what Futurescape is about. The reason that we do these events is to show we can put all of our different technologies together and work with third parties to actually show those technologies in real life situations.
"From a retail perspective we would be showing transparent displays, we would be showing devices in a high street environment, how shop assistants can use tablets to enhance the shopper’s experience. A lot of what we’re doing is tying all of this together."
"We’re not there to challenge major players who have been there in the past who provide the infrastructure. We’re not there for servers or storage. Where you’ll find us is in the end point tech.
"By 2020 we will be a $400bn organisation with 25% of our revenues coming from what we consider to be the business market. For the UK and Ireland, already for this year, we are looking at a business that can generate a $1bn worth of revenue."
Long also touched on Samsung’s Knox security platform found on its Android smartphones. He said that Samsung is "increasingly being engaged by banks" wanting to use Knox for its internal security.
The BYOD and BYOA (Bring Your Own Application) is a large driver for Samsung’s enterprise goals, and Samsung hopes to woo IT managers with the prospect of locking down company and individual devices in a post-BlackBerry market.
Last week, the Pentagon revealed it is set to use Samsung Galaxy devices despite previous reservations over the security of the Android operating system.
The US Department of Defense [DoD] has added five Galaxy phones and tablets to a list of approved products for use in the Pentagon, even though Homeland Security released a report last summer claiming Android is 100 times more vulnerable than Apple’s iOS.
The Galaxy S4, Galaxy S4 Active, Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 and Galaxy Note 10 are all on the list, running Android 4.4 (KitKat). They also run Samsung’s own KNOX system.
Injong Rhee, senior VP of KNOX Business for Samsung, said the security platform was central to securing government adoption.
"It is the unique combination of security and interoperability that enables Samsung to meet the DoD’s rigorous requirements with an unparalleled selection of commercial off-the-shelf devices, pre-approved for U.S. military and federal use," he said in a statement.
