BlackBerry has strengthened its cross-platform software efforts by acquiring Good.
The Canadian smartphone company has confirmed that it is purchasing Good Technology for $425 million (around £280 million).
The Good Dynamics platform provides encryption, advanced data loss prevention and secure communication between applications.
So what in particular does BlackBerry want with this new company? Good Technologies helps corporate clients to manage smartphones running on different operating systems. In particular, around 64 percent of active Good devices run iOS.
“The acquisition of Good is aligned with BlackBerry’s strategy to offer customers the most complete, end-to-end solution that secures the entire mobile enterprise, across all platforms,” reads the company’s official statement.
Combined with BlackBerry’s dabblings with Android and Samsung KNOX, as well as BlackBerry 10, the company hopes that it will be able to “provide customers with increased choice for securely deploying any leading operating system in their organisation.”
It represents an atypically large acquisition from BlackBerry.Back in 2010, it acquired QNX for $200 million, but that’s been about the upper limit of its spending to date.
Related: BlackBerry Passport review
“By acquiring Good, BlackBerry will better solve one of the biggest struggles for CIOs today, especially those in regulated industries: securely managing devices across any platform,” said BlackBerry CEO John Chen. “By providing even stronger cross-platform capabilities our customers will not have to compromise on their choice of operating systems, deployment models or any level of privacy and security.”
BlackBerry expects the acquisition to be completed “toward the end of the company’s 2016 fiscal third quarter,” subject to usual approval.
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