BlackBerry Updates Enterprise Partner Program for IoT Security

BlackBerry just revamped it Enterprise Partner Program (BEPP) to give channel partners more flexibility to capture more opportunities from securing IoT.

The IoT security market is expected to generate more than $1.1 trillion in enterprise spend by 2023, much of which is expected to come from cloud-based deployments, according to BlackBerry.

Richard McLeod, BlackBerry’s global vice president of enterprise software channels, tells Channel Partners that with increasing numbers of customers demanding and migrating their services to the cloud, his company recently rolled out an updated BlackBerry UEM Cloud offering.

BlackBerry’s Richard McLeod

“In conjunction with that release, we decided to introduce the new silver tier to enable channel partners to fully sell, deploy and support this new offering so that they can meet the increased market demand and capture some of the many opportunities that we’re seeing for cloud-based deployments,” he said. “To make gaining the new accreditation as seamless as possible, we dramatically streamlined the training required and now allow partners to complete it at their own pace in virtual lab format, requiring zero travel. This is an exciting development for BlackBerry partners around the world that makes selling and supporting our cloud-based security solutions more accessible and rewarding.”

BEPP is designed to help partners – VARs, resellers and MSPs – gain new competencies and capabilities that will enable them to meet and exceed market demand, by ensuring partners are well equipped to successfully design, architect, implement and support BlackBerry solutions, McLeod said.

Split into four tiers (authorized, silver, gold and platinum), the program allows partners to build differentiated solutions/services that leverage BlackBerry’s experience in cybersecurity, endpoint management, encryption, and data privacy.

Program benefits include: recurring SaaS revenue and professional services revenue from supporting cloud migration and growth; virtual training and access to the beta community and knowledge base to test products before they are released; availability of not-for-resale (NFR) licenses to test and trial UEM Cloud deployments within a virtual sandbox environment; and demand generation and sales support via proposal-based marketing funds, case studies, strategic go-to-market engagement and access to inside sales resources.

“In the past 12 months, we have added nearly 500 partners globally and are seeing more and more of them investing in BlackBerry as they actively move up the various tiers of the program,” McLeod said. “Each of the new enhancements to the program came as a direct result from the channel’s feedback, and we’re confident that now having listened and taken action on them, partners will now be able to offer an increased range of services, focus on their core competencies and gain increased value from our partnership. It is exciting times ahead for both BlackBerry and our global ecosystem of enterprise partners as we work together to secure IoT.”

BlackBerry’s cybersecurity solutions now are available through the Mirosoft Azure Marketplace. Customers now have access to BlackBerry’s endpoint management and secure communication solutions, including BlackBerry UEM, BlackBerry Workspaces, BlackBerry AtHoc and BlackBerry Spark Communications Services on the marketplace.

“Through Microsoft Azure Marketplace, customers around the world can easily find, buy and deploy partner solutions they can trust, all certified and optimized to run on Azure,” said Sajan Parihar, senior director of the Microsoft Azure Platform. “We’re happy to welcome Blackberry’s cybersecurity solutions to the growing Azure Marketplace ecosystem.”