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Pervacio Dramatically Improving the Ability to Centralize and Speed Operations
Sagaya Christuraj
Monday, September 1, 2014
Consumers today, love their smartphones and tablets, so it should come as no surprise that they want to use their devices at work. The pressure to develop and deploy a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy is on and coming from every direction, including the 'C' suite of executives who tend to be especially keen on using smartphones and tablets for their work. Managing devices in a BYOD environment is no small feat, and the right mobile device management (MDM) product is a key component in making it work.
Therefore, with the accelerated evolution of Mobile devices, the mobile device management needs of organization at every point in the usage and supply chain keeps changing too. With the rapid expansion of mobile phones and handheld devices in and out of the workplace, it has become clear that organizations would need a simple way to manage them. This was the motive in bringing to life Sanjay Kanodia's brainchild Pervacio in 2004, which strives to simplify management and to provide significant savings in terms of time and resource investment. Based out of Kirkland, WA, the firm owns and operates a Web-based mobile device management platform that offers a suite of applications, features, services, and agents for managing various types of mobile phones and handheld devices.
Sanjay with his team of experts has developed a complete range of robust applications that provide seamless end-to-end management capabilities from a single interface for nearly every mobile device irrespective of the network type, device type, operating platform, or where the device is in the usage lifecycle."Because our solutions are delivered in a SaaS model, hosted within Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure and delivered over the Internet, they are always up to date, easy to use and require little or no setup," says Sanjay.

A Solution to Meet Every Need
Rather than building a vertical solution that caters to a few large enterprise customers utilizing a mere handful of device types, Sanjay decided to construct a platform that would be useful to the greatest number of organizations, because it can handle the maximum breadth of devices, operating systems and networks. "And we went a step further by breaking it into a number of individual products that can be used independently, and can be combined into integrated product suites. As a result, we have solutions for organizations at every level; from recyclers that simply want to wipe data from a device and inventory its asset tags, to multinational enterprises that need to manage, secure, and monitor every one of their employees' mobile devices through every phase of its life," says Sanjay.
The firm's Revolution Device Management Platform can be divided into 13 individual applications, and 27 discreet features, services and agents and was developed in concert with Samsung, Motorola, Sprint, Ingram Micro and other large enterprise clients.
Taken individually, each Pervacio product is designed to provide significant savings in terms of time and resource investment. When combined into product suites, Pervacio's Device Management platform provides end-to-end savings, security, and ease of management. Currently Pervacio supports thousands of devices and more are added every week. Each one has been thoroughly tested for system compatibility by the staff in its certification center.

Taking out the Trash
Pervacio's platform offers Data Wipe that helps IT personnel to prepare mobile devices for disposal or redeployment. It auto-identifies and wipes mobile devices clean in seconds with a single, simple uniform interface across the entire range of makes, models, and carriers. It also logs the asset tags and transaction details of each device processed, generating an audit-able system of record.
In Single or Multi-Unit mode, Pervacio Data Wipe provides rapid, complete, and secure data erasure across North American Carriers, Device platforms and Manufacturers. Data Wipe also incorporates support for locked devices and SIM and SD cards. The resource savings are huge. With Pervacio's Data Wipe, one person with one USB hub can process as many phones as it would take as many as fifteen people to process manually. It eliminates the risks that can be introduced by human error through the automation of the data wiping, asset tagging and software update processes.

Once a set of devices are connected Data Wipe auto-identifies the units, capturing Make, Model, Carrier and Firmware details, wipes the units clean of user settings and data, including sensitive user data that hard-resets and built-in security wipes may miss, then logs the details of the transaction - completely eliminating the potential for human error. Since it is SaaS software, it automatically down- loads software updates and newly released device profiles, ensuring the tools to process are present and new devices as soon as they become available.
Adding to this is the backup and restore application that is used to back-up data from a mobile device. Also in the package are a Software Manager, Asset Manager and a Configuration Manager.
The company's platform also provides Content Manager that enables the delivery of critical business documents to mobile devices; a remote control solution; a help desk application that enables service providers and enterprises to provide real-time support to their users along with Alert Manager. In addition, its platform offers various features and services, which include over-the-air provisioning, third-party application management, automated log collection, scripting and remote execution, no-touch device reset recovery, pro-active device monitoring, path and update management, zero-touch content sharing, enterprise integration, and connectivity support.

Engaging Customers
Pervacio's Revolution platform architecture combines new and open standard technologies that make it not only the most stable, compatible and interoperable device management solution available, but also the most exciting and innovative. Adding to this is the single web-based (or platform agnostic java applet) user interface to manage all of a firm's devices in any way connected to the network, or the number of devices that needs to be managed.

The Fan Following
Currently the firm supports over 1,000 devices on some of the most advanced mobile platforms including iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile& Blackberry and most demanded makes including Samsung, Apple, LG, Nokia, HTC&Sony Ericsson.
The reason for this is that it provides service providers the ability to create new revenue opportunities by responding more rapidly to the needs of their users, through the rapid introduction of enhanced services all while reducing support costs. It provides them with granular control over the services provided to users allowing them to configure and update software, manage configurations, and extend support capability to the mobile device; over the air or tethered. It can be used to enhance current service or create new management services using Revolution's service oriented architecture (SOA).
At the moment for Pervacio, USA, Canada, India and Europe are geographies which bring them a lot of revenue. During the first four years, most of the software development took place in close proximity to the founding clients Motorola and Sprint/Nextel in the US. Pervacio has R&D centers in US, Hungary, UK and India.

Early Days
"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear," said Nelson Mandela. The story of this company that is on the verge of attaining IPO also needed a brave leader and it was Sanjay who came to its rescue. What sets Sanjay apart from most CEOs in the Device Management field is his hands-on experience in building and developing enterprise class software solutions and being part of fast moving technology companies such as Riverbed (a mobile and wireless software pioneer) during rapid growth and acquisition periods.
As a mobile software technology industry veteran, Sanjay spotted the need for a device management solution well before it was recognized as a need by the general market. Sanjay's other uniquely farsighted view is that the"completeness" of a Mobile Device Management solution may well be defined by the breadth of devices the solution supports.
Thus, when the telecommunications giant, Motorola, that later on proved to be a key in the development of the company offered a deal to Pervacio, Sanjay took a leap of faith, which set the company on a long and winding journey alongside Motorola. In the process,Motorola helped Sanjay to build a robust platform and product suite.

Although early to the market, this facthelped Pervacio establish good relations with other giants like Samsung and HTC. "In the industry, no one has such deep relationships with OEM's as Pervacio. We are helping to reduce their cost of operations and improve quality and visibility which is the reason for them to keep coming back to us," adds Sanjay.
Ten years hence, with a global headcount approaching 150 and very little from the investment community the business model is more of a subscription-based approach. The firm has been cash flow positive since past 3 years and growing exponentially. "With proven products, a rock solid service foundation and marquee industry partnerships the firm will only continue to grow across the globe in near future," adds Sanjay.

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