Dive Brief:

• BlackBerry announced a new enterprise partner program on Monday. The program "will provide partners with best practices that enhance their skills to offer and support BlackBerry’s cross platform security and productivity solutions," the company said in a news release.

• The new program seeks to help Blackberry’s partners “take advantage of secure mobile business solutions -- as opposed to the more typical mobile device management solutions -- which will open up more market opportunities for partners,” a channel executive told CRN.

• BlackBerry has been struggling the last several years, and its executives hope the shift to security and a new focus on partners can help.

Dive Insight:

Richard McLeod, global vice president of enterprise software channels at BlackBerry, said the revised program is an “opportunity for our partners to help consult with customers and transform how business works, and to capitalize on all the growth and profit opportunities that come from that.”

BlackBerry has made several other changes to its channel program to entice its partners and to enable them to “better take advantage of the end-to-end security solutions offered in the company’s BlackBerry Enterprise Software Platform for both on-premise services and cloud solutions.”

BlackBerry has worked to expand its enterprise software business since the rise of smartphones caused the rapid decline of the more traditional mobile phone market. Since then, the company has mostly made headlines with reports of its continued struggle to remain profitable. In February, BlackBerry announced plans to cut 200 jobs at its headquarters in Ontario and in Florida.

To try and help turn around the company, CEO John Chen has focused on software and licensing patents. But the company still appeared to be taking on water. The latest focus on partners and mobile security are the latest moves Chen has made to help the company succeed again.

BlackBerry has made a number of software and services acquisitions over the last year, most of which have been cybersecurity focused. In February, the company announced it acquired Encription, a United Kingdom-based cybersecurity consulting firm.