BlackBerry Limited (NYSE:BB, TSX:BB) and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) have formed what they termed "a strategic partnership" that couples BlackBerry’s expertise in mobility and security with Microsoft’s cloud and productivity products.
Shares of BlackBerry were up around 3% in mid-morning trading Tuesday, at $US13.10 a share, on word of the release of BlackBerry Enterprise Bridge, which couples Microsoft Office 365 mobile apps with BlackBerry's security tools to provide their joint business customers with secure access to such things as Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and Word on smartphones.
"BlackBerry has always led the market with new and innovative ways to protect corporate data on mobile devices," Carl Wiese, president of Global Sales at BlackBerry, said. "We saw a need for a hyper-secure way for our joint customers to use native Office 365 mobile apps. BlackBerry Enterprise Bridge addresses this need and is a great example of how BlackBerry and Microsoft continue to securely enable workforces to be highly productive in today’s connected world."
The companies also said the BlackBerry Secure platform for connecting people, devices, processes and systems has been integrated with the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Specifically, they said BlackBerry UEM Cloud, BlackBerry Workspaces, BlackBerry Dynamics and BlackBerry AtHoc are now available on Azure.