By Aziz Benmalek, CEO and Board Director, Aeris
Every CEO gets asked why they took the job. My answer goes back further than Aeris. It goes back to a belief I was raised on, and a journey that began in Morocco. With the World Cup heading there in 2030, that arc has been on my mind. I grew up believing that knowledge, excellence, and continuous learning are the only foundations that last. That belief carried me from Morocco to Paris, across Europe and Asia, to North America, building technology businesses at every stage.
I watched every wave of enterprise technology move through the data center, into the cloud, and up through the application layer.
But conviction about a market is not the same as conviction about a company. That clarity took one decisive conversation.
A Diamond, Formed Over Twenty Years
My conviction about Aeris came through deeply honest conversations with Marc Jones, Aeris’ chairman, who was also my predecessor. Just straight talk about the strengths, the unfinished work, and what it would take to make Aeris the leader in our category.
The more layers we peeled back, the more I saw something hiding in plain sight: twenty years of accumulated IP that is hard to replicate. A purpose-built cellular core, not assembled from other solutions but engineered from scratch, and still scaling and innovating today. Thirty tier-one mobile networks integrated through a strategic acquisition that instantly expanded our global reach. An AI-enabled, end-to-end connected-vehicle program that delivers connectivity management and next-gen Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) architecture for the world’s leading auto OEMs. The first fully integrated Zero-Trust security and visibility solution for cellular IoT devices. That’s when the diamond came into focus.
“A diamond formed under twenty years of pressure, genuinely rare, and ready to be shaped and polished. It was my mission to position Aeris as the horizontal platform for every cellular-connected device. My job is to shape, polish, and let it catch the light. That’s the work I came here to do.”
The Convergence
Microsoft, Sage, and Splunk taught me how platforms win, how SaaS creates durable value, and how data and channels multiply reach. Aeris is where those three threads finally meet. Every step before led here.
Too many players treat connectivity, software, and intelligence as separate businesses. But customers’ problems don’t arrive in those categories. Auto OEMs with millions of vehicles globally do not want to stitch solutions together across multiple vendors. They want a single intelligent platform, one that eliminates complexity and delivers ease of use everywhere, all the time.
“The next decade won’t belong to the best connectivity, software, or intelligence company. It will belong to whoever makes them one.”
Has your career ever had a moment like that — when everything you’d done suddenly pointed in one direction?
Next in Voices of Aeris: CEO Edition
Earlier this year, Aeris surpassed 100 million connected devices. Up next, I’ll share what it means, what it took, and where we’re headed.
