Channel Daily News

Trellia Networks expands to U.K.

Montreal-based mobility management company Trellia Networks Inc. is growing beyond Canada with a recent U.K.-based acquisition and will be expanding its physical footprint into the U.S. by next year, all while looking for more partners that can capitalize on the bring your own device (BYOD) trend.

Trellia, founded in 2004, has begun to grow rapidly in the past few years following the growth of the BYOD trend among businesses. Prior to its current offerings, the company was focused on remote access and mobility for PCs. The company is based in Canada but has strategic partnerships with service providers in the United States as well.

“We allow enterprise or government customers adopt consumer devices…in their organization,” said Rami Karam, the company’s director of marketing. The company has management tools for BlackBerry, Android and iOS platforms.

“When an organization selects Trellia to manage their devices, they get credentials to a console. They don’t have to install anything,” which makes the process simpler, he said. Trellia uses a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) mobile device management module for businesses’ IT departments to deploy applications onto various devices and have visibility into which devices carry company information. Through this module, companies can have greater control over password management, remote wipes and locks for lost or stolen devices, among other capabilities.

The trend that shifted Trellia’s business really began with the introduction of the iPhone, he said, but it grew rapidly after that. Mobile device management for smartphones and tablets now accounts for roughly 90 per cent of its overall business.

“We were accustomed to a world where the PC and the Blackberry were the standard. Over the last year and a half, that has really changed,” Karam said. “A crack appeared in the armour,” and people began to buy their own consumer devices but want corporate e-mail and other business applications on their phones.

“The balance of power has shifted, if you will, into the hands of the business,” rather than IT, he said. “We found that almost all the organizations we spoke to are facing the same challenges,” regardless of size, he said. Trellia serves customers at all levels of government as well as various sized businesses across different verticals.

On Aug. 2, Trellia announced a partnership with U.K.-based IT security service provider Evolve North, which will act as a value-added reseller (VAR) for the company. “Evolve North extends us into that country without having to have operations there,” Karam said. “They help us grow our organization without growing our cost base.”

“The other thing that’s critical is that they have deep IT service experience. They can help guide the customer to making the right decision,” he added.  

Trellia has also informal relationships with the major and smaller wireless carriers in Canada. “In North America, we’ve effectively built a solid foundation going to market through the carriers. We think that’s one way to go to market,” he said. Often, if customers are interested in using their smartphones for business and personal use, carriers will refer them to Trellia’s offerings.

“From a channel perspective, we’re going to work very heavily with IT service providers and managed service providers that have long standing business helping enterprises,” with managing consumer devices, he said, especially those with a focus on security.

Now, Karam said the company is looking for not only more partners, but a wide variety, who have local expertise like Evolve North does. Trellia currently has 30 employees based in Montreal. Next year, Trellia also will physically expand into the U.S. with a new office.