BlackBerry Ltd., today named a former CEO of a network monitoring and management platform development and training organization as the head of a key division of the Waterloo, Ont.-based smart phone maker.

As the new president of BlackBerry’s devices and emerging solutions business of BlackBerry, Ron Louks, former CEO of the OpenNMS Group, will take charge of the company’s long-term-product roadmap, John Chen, BlackBerry CEO, said in statement today.

“Ron will focus on BlackBerry’s long-term product roadmap, including hardware, software and design, as well as the company’s joint development efforts,” he said. “A good deal of Ron’s time will be spent with customers, carriers and partners.”

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“On our path to return BlackBerry to profitability, nothing is more important than remaining deeply connected to our customers and designing and delivery secure products that exceed expectations,” said Chan.

When BlackBerry reported a loss of US$4.4 billion last month, Chen also announced a partnership with Taiwanese device manufacturer Foxconn Technologies to create new handset models for fast-growing markets outside North America in 2014.

The announcement of Louks’ appointment follows the appointment last month of Jon Sims, former president of SAP AG’s mobile service business, as BlackBerry’s new chief of global enterprise service business. Sims formally joins BlackBerry this month as leader of a division that will likely be the centre of BlackBerry’s turnaround.

Ron Louks, joins BlackBerry from the OpenNMS Group, an organization that supports the training, custom development and consulting on the OpenNMS platform. The OpenNMS is an enterprise-grade network management application built on an open source model and has no licencing cost.

Prior to being CEO of OpenNMS, Louks held leadership positions over several decades in the tech industry, and was chief strategy officer of HTC America Inc., and chief technology officer of Sony Ericsson.