A person with knowledge of the situation says that BlackBerry Ltd.'s chief operating officer has resigned in order to deal with a family health issue.

The source who spoke on condition of anonymity says that Marty Beard will leave the company effective Dec. 1.

The company did not immediately confirm the information.

BlackBerry hired Beard in 2014. He was previously chairman and CEO of LiveOps, a provider of cloud applications for customer services.

He helped oversee BlackBerry's transformation from making smartphones to focusing on its growing software business.

Beard is currently responsible for corporate development and mergers and acquisitions, plus marketing, strategic and application partnering, developer outreach and industry and security evangelism.