BlackBerry taps cloud startup head as next COO

BlackBerry has announced the appointment of Marty Beard as chief operating officer, who joins the struggling devices and software manufacturer from LiveOps, a provider of cloud-based customer service solutions.

As chief operating officer Beard will be responsible for cross-functional organisations including marketing, BlackBerry 10 application development, and customer care. Marty is also responsible for instituting best practices and processes across the organisation.

“BlackBerry continues to attract top talent to the company,” said BlackBerry executive chairman and chief executive officer John Chen.

“Marty brings extensive experience in operations, marketing and serving customers through the best technologies and processes available,” he added.

Beard most recently served as the chairman and chief executive officer of LiveOps, a startup providing cloud-based applications for customer services and contact centres.

Prior to LiveOps Beard served in a number of marketing and e-commerce related positions at Sybase and Oracle.

Attracting top talent to BlackBerry is essential at a time when the struggling device maker looks eager to refocus its products and services and turn its fortunes around. Last month the company surprised analysts with its first quarterly profit in years, delivering $23m during the three month period ending in June, and said that it would continue to target enterprises and the public sector primarily.

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