Breaking ground for Blackberry

In business and in life, Khalid Kefel is an early adopter. The 40-year-old's desire to stay ahead of the technology curve, either by owning one of the first mobiles or to devoted himself to a career in IT years before most people had a clue what the internet was, has led to him managing the Middle Eastern operations of Canada-based Research In Motion (RIM), maker of the wildly popular BlackBerry smartphone. A techie at heart, Mr Kefel's career has followed the arc of the internet itself, each move made possible as the wireless communications have become an indispensable tool.
Today, he is leading RIM's push into the Gulf, the latest frontier for smartphones.
The son of Lebanese immigrants who lived in the then small rural town of Kenema, Sierra Leone, Mr Kefel's entrepreneurial spirit was sparked early by his father. "I have it in my blood," he says. "My dad started his business life at 12 years old, selling cigarettes and chewing gum, so he's my inspiration.
"He's had his ups and downs and he's worked in many different types of businesses, trading food, cars, building materials in different parts of Africa. But he's not a quitter."
Though he wanted to help his father in west Africa, his parents had saved money and sent him off to Boston's Suffolk University to study electrical engineering. That was when, in 1987, he was first exposed to what was then cutting-edge technology: an IBM 8088 personal computer equipped with a then state-of-the-art monochrome monitor, 5¼ inch floppy disk drive and a 1200 baud modem, all of which he bought for about $800 (Dh2,938). But it was three years later that Mr Kefel encountered the mobile phone and he says it changed his life. "It was an analogue device, it was a flip device and it was a Motorola," he said with a laugh. "I was excited about it. I basically showed it off to my friends. It was fabulous."
He says now he has no idea how he lived without it. Love-at-first-sight led to an internship at Raytheon Engineering outside of Boston where he did computer-aided design work for several months in 1992. When his contract ended, he was hired as a support assistant with Corporate Software, helping companies develop their computer networks at a time when IT was a nascent, but growing industry. He later went to the company's consulting side where he spent his days loading up operating systems and deciphering technical computing languages to help develop IT road maps for firms such as Fidelity Investments.
In 1995, Mr Kefel got the keys to Corporate Software's first Toronto office. But the firm's merger with R R Donnelley & Sons to create Stream International, prompted him to jump ship to rival Software Spectrum the next year.
Over the next five years, Mr Kefel rose to be a principle consultant but the hard work and long hours - especially those related to making sure the Y2K phenomenon would not cripple computer networks - began to take its toll.
In 2000, he switched gears and became a IT consultant with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Canada.
He wasn't there for long. "Some friends of mine who were working at RIM were in constant communication with me, trying to convince me to work with this start-up company," he explains. "After eight months, I decided to make the move."
The decision to take a chance on the relatively unknown Canadian start-up, a bit player in mobile communications with an e-mail pager as its primary product, was a surprisingly easy one for Mr Kefel. After spending almost a decade working in IT, he realised the future was not in the dense collection of computer wires tangled underneath every desk, but it was in wireless potential around them.
"The internet was really a new world to be part of," he says. "We would see that even as consultants where we were actually sitting in satellite offices where we only had a computer terminal to log in, do our work, and leave. That, obviously with my friends who were working at RIM, sparked my interest that wireless is going to be big," he added.
Mr Kefel's initial role was with RIM's sales team to work directly with businesses to convince chief information officers to invest their communications budgets in this relatively new technology, something they were wary of at first. But once they got their hands on early BlackBerry devices, it became an easy sell, he says.
After a couple of years, RIM began seeing significant growth and assigned Mr Kefel to work directly with AT&T, one of the largest US telecommunications companies, to oversee the launch of BlackBerry technical services with the operator. He proved successful in that role as well, taking the BlackBerry brand from its first voice-enabled cellphone with AT&T to help drive RIM to reach the one million subscriber mark. He was later moved to Bonn, Germany, to work with Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile international operations in 2004.
"It was a totally different culture," he says. "For one, the language was a barrier. I could eventually get by and make enough jokes to break the ice in discussions with executives."
It was in Bonn where the idea to expand RIM into the Middle East began to grow in Mr Kefel's mind. He saw the region's potential for RIM and he felt his wireless experience, along with his fluent Arabic, were vital assets if RIM decided to expand there. In 2006, RIM executives granted Mr Kefel's wish and he began managing RIM's business in the region, signing distribution and sales contracts and training staff throughout the Middle East while still based in Germany.
His new assignment coincided with the boom in smartphone use. BlackBerrys became the must-have gadget for executives, and some users were so devoted to their Blackberrys that they suffered "Blackberry thumb," a repetitive stress injury caused by a repeated use of the thumb to type on their Blackberrys.
As the popularity of the device soared, so did RIM. The increase in broadband internet speeds, the emergence of mobile networks and the unique coupling of voice communications to the BlackBerry's traditional e-mail service all helped to its growth.
But the constant back and forth from Europe to the Middle East took a toll on Mr Kefel's family, he says.
Earlier this year, RIM agreed to post Mr Kefel in Dubai.
While the company searches for more permanent office space, Mr Kefel has set up shop in true techie fashion: the neighbourhood Starbucks. "My main job here is to raise the brand awareness of the BlackBerry and convince people to give it a shot," he said.
Kevin Restivo, a mobile analyst with IDC, says his biggest challenge will be "to make the BlackBerry brand as desirable in countries like the UAE as it is North America".
Mr Kefel admits he faces a challenge in selling the benefits of technology to executives in the Middle East. "There's still a reliance on manual work within organisations," he says.
Nor does RIM know as much about the region's market as it might like. "There's theoretical estimates as to how many small-to-medium businesses there are in the region and their expenditures, but there isn't as much detailed research you might find in Canada or the UK, for example," he explains.
RIM got an unwelcome share of bad press recently, after Etisalat distributed a software patch to its BlackBerry subscribers that was later found to be an unauthorised piece of "spyware". Although both RIM and Mr Kefel declined to speak further on the matter, he did say that the experience has underscored how important it is to communicate with all partners in the region.
"From a management perspective, the decisions that I've been making is to continue reaching out to partners and reaching out to them and making sure that any work that is being done is closely co-ordinated with ourselves so there are no surprises in the market," he says.
So, Mr Kefel travels throughout the Middle East, connecting with mobile operators and mobile retailers to get the BlackBerry into as many hands as possible in emerging markets in the UAE, Saudi Arabic and Egypt.
As he taps on his BlackBerry - he owns three, including the touch-screen Storm and 3G Bold devices - it is clear the executive is still fascinated by technology.
"I still enjoy doing this as a hobby, actually," he says. "I sit down with my son and put together a computer just from scratch and my 15-year-old is fairly proficient at installing operating systems."
Even his father, now a retired 67-year-old who tends to a 100-acre farm in Nigeria, uses a BlackBerry.
"The first time he's ever browsed the internet was on a BlackBerry," Mr Kefel says with a proud smile. "Our whole family has our own network on instant messenger and we manage to chat every day."
dgeorgecosh@thenational.ae