BlackBerry + Heretto

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BlackBerry migrated from a complex, multi-vendor enterprise web platform to Heretto, and in doing so, gave a lean technical writing team the end-to-end independence, AI readiness, and publishing speed they needed to do more with less.

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About BlackBerry

BlackBerry provides enterprises and governments the intelligent software and services that power the world around us. Based in Waterloo, Ontario, the company’s high-performance foundational software enables major automakers and industrial giants alike to unlock transformative applications, drive new revenue streams and launch innovative business models, all without sacrificing safety, security, and reliability. With a deep heritage in Secure Communications, BlackBerry delivers operational resiliency with a comprehensive, highly secure, and extensively certified portfolio for mobile fortification, mission-critical communications, and critical events management.

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Challenge

Modernizing for the next generation of technical content

As BlackBerry evolved its business, the technical documentation team saw an opportunity to transform its content platform. Having built an extensive library of high-quality content over many years, the team was ready for the next phase of its content strategy, one that prioritized greater agility, simpler publishing workflows, and more flexibility in how content was managed and delivered, while ensuring the team was prepared to take advantage of emerging AI capabilities.

"What we had was good, and it served us well for many years, but we saw an opportunity to focus our content operations and create a stronger foundation for the future," said Marco Cacciacarro, Senior Technical Writer at BlackBerry, who has managed the team's content systems for nearly two decades. "You have to look in the mirror sometimes and say, 'If we want to move forward, we need to find something different."

The team began evaluating modern DITA CCMS platforms that could streamline content operations while giving tech writers greater ownership of the entire publishing experience. For Marco, that meant finding a platform that could handle everything from backend content management to front-end site delivery within a single solution.

Key pain points included:

• No true staging environment — the team couldn't navigate a live mirror of their site before publishing; only a limited back-end preview was available
• Publishing took all day — a full multi-guide, multi-language release required up to 8–10 hours of manual rollouts, error checks, and re-publishes
• Cross-functional coordination — front-end changes required coordination across multiple teams, adding complexity to documentation updates.
• Localization management — the team wanted a solution that simplified multilingual publishing and localization workflows
• Vendor sprawl — the old solution required a separate CMS plugin, a separate web platform, and a separate search vendor, all of which had to be coordinated for any meaningful change

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Solution

An end-to-end platform, and a passionate team

Marco's evaluation process was thorough. He spoke to multiple vendors, built comparison documents, and ran proof-of-concept sessions before presenting his recommendation to leadership.

He found Heretto by chance: a writer from his team had moved to another Heretto customer and became a trusted, firsthand reference. That peer recommendation, combined with an independent DITA CCMS market comparison article, put Heretto on the list.

What moved Heretto to the top was a combination of capability and people.

On the capability side, Heretto was one of the few vendors offering a genuine end-to-end solution: a DITA-native backend CCMS, a manageable front-end site layer, a built-in search engine, and Deploy API purpose-built for custom integrations. Most competitors did some of this well — none did it all like Heretto.

On the people side, the Heretto team's preparedness stood out at every stage: from early exploratory conversations with sales, to proof-of-concept design sessions with solutions architects, to implementation, and ongoing customer success.

"The level of effort you guys put into just talking to us and showing us what you had… I figured, if they put that same passion into the product, it's going to be an easy choice. And it was."

Heretto checked every box on Marco's requirements list:

• DITA-native — the platform is built around DITA, not bolted onto it
• End-to-end delivery — backend authoring and front-end site management in a single system
• Git-style branching model — version management that developers instantly understand ("code branches for content")
• Built-in search — eliminating the separate search vendor entirely
• Flexible metadata/taxonomy — enabling more granular tagging than the previous system allowed
• Schematron support — standards enforcement without blocking saves or deploys
• Etto, Heretto’s AI Copilot — built-in AI authoring assistance without an additional fee or migration

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Results

The foundation is in place. Now they're building on it.

BlackBerry launched on Heretto in March 2026. Since then, the difference has been immediate and measurable.

Publishing speed is the most dramatic change. What previously required a full day of manual rollouts, error checks, and staged republishing now takes five minutes, regardless of content volume. Marco estimates a 40% improvement in the overall content turnaround time.

"No matter what scale of changes we've done so far, you click the button and everything publishes within five minutes. That's an awesome change compared to what we had to deal with before."

A real staging environment changed the QA workflow entirely. For the first time, the team has a live, production-like staging site that is auto-synced to the authoring environment, shareable via link, and deployable at will. In the old system, pre-publish review meant a limited back-end simulation. Now, a writer can make a change to a topic and check it on the staging site within seconds.

Content management is faster and more intuitive. Heretto's warehouse file approach to conrefs replaced a slow-loading repository of thousands of discrete objects. Marco built an AI-assisted tool that auto-inserts conrefs from pasted DITA, eliminating manual insertion entirely. Ditaval management is simpler with a set once, always active approach. Building new pages is a matter of copy, modify, and publish rather than template-by-template GUI work.

Control and independence. Marco's team controls the full stack — from authoring, to site management, to deployment — within Heretto.

"I used to underestimate what a team of good technical writers can do on their own, working with a competent vendor. You don't need to have another internal group do certain things for you. You can really empower yourself if you find the right vendor." Marco Cacciacarro, Senior Technical Writer, BlackBerry

AI integration is already underway, and getting more sophisticated. The team uses Cursor alongside Heretto to generate first-draft DITA content, auto-insert conrefs, peer-edit topics, and manage AI translation alignment for localized content. He describes the relationship between the two as natural: content starts in Heretto, goes through AI tooling, and comes back into Heretto.

On The Horizon

A customer-facing chatbot powered by Heretto content, deeper Deploy API integrations, and PDF Generator adoption to give the team full control over PDF output without professional services involvement. BlackBerry is also excited to be participating in the Heretto Insights beta, bringing content analytics into a team that's been operating without them.

With the foundation in place, BlackBerry is now focused on expanding how it uses content to support AI, automation, customer self-service, and deeper integration across its content ecosystem.

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About Heretto

Heretto is a cloud-native DITA CCMS and content delivery platform built for technical documentation teams that need to create, manage, and publish structured content at scale. From collaborative authoring and translation management to front-end portal delivery and API-based integrations, Heretto gives documentation teams end-to-end control — without the infrastructure overhead.