BlackBerry Amps Up North America Partner Program

BlackBerry on Tuesday unveiled improvements to the BlackBerry Cylance North America Partner Program focused on solution providers (VARs, national resellers and distributors), as well as MSSPs

The program offers prevention-first predictive security solutions and a spectrum of consulting services supported by field sales and marketing support, technical support, training and tools.

May Mitchell, vice president of global channel sales and field marketing at BlackBerry Cylance, tells us after launching the BlackBerry Cylance partner program more than three years ago, the goal is to “maintain partner mind share and stay competitive.”

BlackBerry’s May Mitchell

“We continue our commitment to enable partners with innovative solutions that help them build a predictable growth business,” she said. “We have an active partner advisory council, who are integral to our business and continually provide us with feedback on strategy, road map and programs. Additionally, we have identified a list of focus partners that are aligned with field sales, sales engineering, channel and marketing. There is a core set of regular activities we plan for and participate in with these partners to help grow their business.”

Solution-provider partners resell BlackBerry Cylance solutions and cybersecurity services driven by AI technology. There are three levels of solution provider partners: emerald, platinum and gold.

BlackBerry Cylance offers a full incumbency designation for renewals to all emerald and platinum members in good standing. Incumbent partners are not required to register renewal deals as renewals are processed at the same price and discount as the original order.

Emerald partners now can earn 40% with deal registration.

“We offer partners a proposal-based MDF program to help create demand for new business,” Mitchell said. “This allows us to provide protection for partners who are proactive and invest in our program. We also streamlined the deal-registration process so we can quickly work with our partners on a joint sales motion.”

“In the past few years, we have grown with the BlackBerry Cylance Partner Program to create a predictable and profitable recurring business model,” said Bill Strub, CEO of NaviLogic, a solution provider partner. “We receive tremendous support from the BlackBerry Cylance team with field marketing and technical training.”

With BlackBerry Cylance AI-driven endpoint protection, MSSPs can help customers reduce the time their support desk spends addressing malware issues and re-imaging machines. The MSSP program now offers simplified pricing and deal protection for deals with more than 500 seats.

Additional key program features include: billing within 30 days of joining the program; licensing products on a monthly or annual subscription basis; access to the BlackBerry Cylance partner portal, partner communications, field sales and marketing support; a multitenant console to create, manage and monitor multiple tenants from a centralized location in a single view; and no upfront fees for license and support.

MSSPs own the relationship with no direct communication from BlackBerry Cylance to customers.

“We are always looking to enhance the partner experience by improving the speed of transaction and enabling our partners with marketing resources and technical accreditations,” Mitchell said. “Improvements to our partner-focused content, including training and demand-generation kits, ensure our partners’ sales and technical resources are educated to sell, position and deliver AI-driven cybersecurity solutions. Our global channel sales engineering teams provide weekly product updates to our partners and also conduct face-to-face trainings globally.”

“Security has become a top priority for our customers and they are increasingly turning to us for solutions that help them stay steps ahead of the most advanced threats and attacks,” said Michael Crean, CEO of Solutions Granted, an MSSP partner. “BlackBerry Cylance’s endpoint protection identifies and stops threats before they penetrate networks, and is extremely easy to deploy and manage. We are looking forward to continuing to grow our business with BlackBerry Cylance.”

At last month’s 2020 RSA Conference, BlackBerry unveiled its new BlackBerry Spark platform with a new unified endpoint security (UES) layer which can work with BlackBerry unified endpoint management (UEM) to deliver zero-trust security. Using AI, ML and automation, Spark now offers improved cyberthreat prevention and remediation, and provides visibility across desktop, mobile, server, and IoT (including automotive) endpoints.