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Cloud Communications Guru Marty Beard Lands at BlackBerry

Global communications giant BlackBerry (News - Alert) has announced it has appointed Marty Beard as the new Chief Operating Officer for the company. His responsibilities will include marketing, app development, customer care and quality, and several other cross-function organizational duties. Beard comes well qualified to the position, having an extensive history of experience with cloud-based communication programs as well as customer support, making him a good fit for the BlackBerry team.

“BlackBerry continues to attract top talent to the company,” said John Chen, Executive Chairman for BlackBerry, adding that he believes Beard is the best man for the job. “Marty brings extensive experience in operations, marketing and serving customers through the best technologies and processes available.”

It is hoped that Beard will direct his previous experience toward developing new ways to make the BlackBerry devices seem more attractive than their competitors, like Apple and Android (News - Alert), through a wide combination of strategies.

Beard's previous experience has prepared him well for a variety of different tasks, which could be part of the reason why he’s taking on cross-functional duties. The position he last held was as the Chairman and CEO at LiveOps (News - Alert) Inc., a major cloud application and customer service provider. Not only does this solidify his experience as a leader and organizer, but the combination of customer service and cloud resources means that he is used to delivering advanced services with a smile, ensuring customer satisfaction.

Before that he was the president of mobile messaging/commerce services unit Sybase 365 (News - Alert), where he also held executive positions such as being the senior vice president of marketing. Beard's experience as both a marketer and a developer is valuable to BlackBerry, because he can work several angles at once to make BlackBerry much more relevant and visible than it is today.


Edited by Rory J. Thompson