Unified Blackberry Partner Program Includes Cylance

BlackBerry on Monday revealed a new global partner program that combines the BlackBerry Enterprise Partner Program and BlackBerry Cylance Partner Program.

The BlackBerry Partner Program features a unified sales portal with real-time access to a revamped curriculum of training, tools and enablement resources. BlackBerry acquired Cylance early last year.

As part of the new program, all 2,200-plus BlackBerry resellers and distribution partners will have access to the company’s entire portfolio. They can generate new revenue opportunities by offering a range of cybersecurity and endpoint management options.

Simplified Sales Motion

May Mitchell is BlackBerry‘s vice president of channel, alliances and field marketing.

BlackBerry’s May Mitchell

“This was always part of our integration plan — to unify the partner programs,” she said. “Doing so simplifies the selling motion for partners as they can now offer a wider portfolio to their customers including the BlackBerry Cyber Suite, BlackBerry Spark products and BlackBerry AtHoc.”

The new program includes a partner protection feature. That allows partners to register their deals to get higher discounts by working closely with BlackBerry’s field sales teams.

There are also several reseller partner distinction levels in the new program, including gold, platinum and emerald. They provide increased levels of benefits and discounts based on partners’ annual new business revenue targets and technical capabilities.

Select value-added distributors will also have the ability to get back-end rebates for achieving new business growth targets.

“Partner protection and incumbency are important things to our partners and to us,” Mitchell said. “Partners can access our innovative solutions driven by AI to solve their customer issues around protecting businesses, endpoints and people.”

More BlackBerry Partner Program Benefits

Additional benefits of the new program include:

• A single deal-registration program.
• Access to the beta community and knowledge base for testing products prior to release.
• Availability of not-for-resale (NFR) licenses so partners can educate, test and trial deployments within a virtual sandbox environment.
• Demand generation and sales support via proposal-based marketing funds, case studies, strategic go-to-market engagement and access to inside sales resources.

“The new program offers a simple global structure for resellers, MSSPs and distributor partners with refreshed training modules, market demand programs and extensive promotional programs,” Mitchell said.

Members of BlackBerry’s partner advisory council got a sneak peek of the new program earlier this fall. Reseller and distributor feedback prompted many of the new enhancements, the company said.

“We are excited by how BlackBerry has embraced simplicity and flexibility as part of its new unified partner program and in recognition of the reality of the complex and chaotic security environment that today’s businesses are grappling with,” said Dominic Grillo, president of Atrion Communication Resources, a BlackBerry partner. “We look forward to working with their partner team in the months and years ahead. With BlackBerry’s security at the core, both our enterprise and midmarket customers can be confident in their ability to manage, protect and defend the connected devices and things within their organization so that they can focus more on what matters most to their business.”