BlackBerry reorganises APAC leadership

BlackBerry has reorganised its Asia-Pacific leadership team after the vendor consolidated its security divisions under BlackBerry Spark.

BlackBerry Australia, New Zealand and India managing director David Nicol takes the new role of BlackBerry IoT Solutions APJ managing director, while Cylance ANZ boss Jason Duerden was named BlackBerry Spark ANZ managing director.

Cylance APAC channel chief Joe McPhillips will also join BlackBerry Spark as APAC director of channel sales.

In February at the RSA Conference, BlackBerry launched its new Spark platform, a comprehensive Unified Endpoint Security (UES) layer, that works with any unified endpoint management (UEM) product.

Shortly after, a new BlackBerry Spark division was created, combining Cylance and its UEM products under a single roof.

Duerden told CRN that BlackBerry wanted to bring the best of both parts of the company together “to deliver on” the emerging unified endpoint security market.

“Now was the time for [BlackBerry] to do that,” Duerden said.

“Locally here in Australia we essentially had equivalent size teams on both sides of the business, and now we’ve created one team as part of the One BlackBerry strategy.”

The rest of BlackBerry’s business is in two other divisions called IoT Solutions and IP licensing. The former includes QNX, BlackBerry Radar transportation asset tracking, BlackBerry AtHoc crisis communications, and more.

BlackBerry Spark global channel chief May Mitchell told CRN that the company is focused on working on a new unified partner program, combining the Cylance and UEM programs.

“We’re currently running two concurrent partner programs, but it’s very simple for the Cylance partners to start selling and learning about the UEM solution, and vice versa,” Mitchell said. “There’s very little overlap between the two partner programs right now.”

Locally, BlackBerry Spark has started pushing its BlackBerry Desktop software, which gives businesses secure access to email, corporate websites, servers, content, and files on personal or non-corporate managed Windows and Mac devices.

The company is offering organisations in Australia and New Zealand who are pivoting to a work-from-home model a free 60-day license of BlackBerry Desktop, with unlimited users.