Sapphire gets polished by new MD

Annabel Berry takes helm of Darlington-based Check Point and Trustwave partner

The new boss of Sapphire says she will draw on the security VAR's ability to marry product supply and services as she looks to extend its growth spurt.

The Darlington-based firm, which claims to have grown sales by 78 per cent over the past two years, has unveiled Annabel Berry as its new managing director following the retirement of company veteran John Morrison.

Berry (pictured) was previously business development director at the Check Point, Trustwave and Tenable partner.

"Where we've seen some really big wins over the last couple of years is when we've engaged across the whole offering Sapphire has, from helping people set their security strategy and looking at risk and compliance and vulnerability programmes, all the way to delivering technology and supporting that," she said.

"There aren't many resellers of our size that do that scale of both services and products we do, so I will definitely look to capitalise on that over the next couple of years."

Morrison, who had been with Sapphire since it was founded in 1998, stepped down in January and Berry said the plan was always to promote a replacement from within Sapphire's existing management team.

Berry joined Sapphire in 2012 with David Lannin to help spearhead its growth in the south and formalise vendor engagements.

"John had been there for a long time and it's been a transition for the business to move forward and find a replacement," Berry said. "We wanted to look internally as we have a strong management team here."

Sapphire now has nearly 50 staff spread across offices in Darlington, Glasgow and Basingstoke.