'It's just so much more user-friendly': why Infiniti Red Bull Racing dropped BlackBerry for Samsung
'I can legitimately work on my phone rather than with the BlackBerry when it was more of just a business monitoring tool,' Al Peasland tells Computing
Samsung has overtaken BlackBerry as the mobile device of choice at Formula One team Infiniti Red Bull Racing in a move that has driven simpler business collaboration processes via smartphones.
That's according to Al Peasland, head of technical partnerships at Infinti Red Bull Racing, who told Computing that the decision was made during the middle of last year's F1 season, which meant a quick turnaround between devices was crucial.
"Obviously with the nature of the business we have, the deployment has to be very robust because we're immediately travelling, there's very little time for things to go wrong and so we've got to be very confident when we deploy a new solution that it works," he said.
Peasland explained how a smooth switchover was ensured prior to last season's Belgian Grand Prix, a race the team won.
"There was a lot of work within the IT department in terms of trialling and piloting and making sure that it was a smooth transition for the workforce. We went travelling and the smartphones were working, you're getting your emails immediately," he said.
Peasland described how using Samsung instead of BlackBerry has drastically improved collaboration within Red Bull Racing at a time when smartphones are beginning to play a much bigger role in race-day efficiency.
"The big thing is we can access more of our business systems with it," he said, before going on to describe the Samsung devices as "just so much more user-friendly".
"I can legitimately work on my phone rather than with the BlackBerry, which was more of just a business monitoring tool. You'd send a few emails, but it was difficult to open attachments and presentations, it missed out," Peasland said.
Further improvements are in the pipeline, he added.
"As we go forwards we'll have SharePoint on here so we'll be able to access our business intranet on our phones; all of those things are being piloted and will be deployed and then it will start to change the business again."
The now defunct Caterham Formula 1 team also opted to move away from issuing BlackBerry devices to staff, instead choosing to provide them with iPhones.
However, BlackBerry still has a very prominent place in Formula One as technology provider to and sponsor of the World Championship winning Mercedes AMG F1 team, the team of F1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton.