On Friday, BlackBerry announced their acquisition of mobility services firm “Good Technology”, to strengthen its position in secure mobile enterprise solutions.

BlackBerry will use Good Technology to complement and enhance existing BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) products that form the basis of BlackBerry’s core secure mobile communications business, the company said in a press release.

Current implementations of BES serve enterprise customers using BlackBerry devices, as well as those running Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, since 2011 after it acquired device management company, Ubitexx. However, the company still provides more security features for its own devices than for third party platforms. BlackBerry is hoping to change that with the acquisition of Good Technology, which has long sold as a competitor for BES for managing non-BlackBerry devices.

The acquisition of Good Technology will help BlackBerry to expand its services even further. Specifically, BlackBerry will offer Good Technology’s secure applications and containerization products that are already in use at thousands of businesses, including more than half of the Fortune 100.

Before the launch of iPhone and Android devices, BlackBerry was the king of corporate smartphones and the company was even beginning to branch out into the consumer market. However, the company has struggled in recent years as Android and iOS found their way into large organizations. Moreover, developing for BlackBerry has been notoriously difficult, so third-party software vendors focused on building applications for iOS and Android, leaving BlackBerry’s app store a barren wasteland.

BlackBerry sees the acquisition as a shift back toward its core value of secure mobile communications for large organizations. This will also secure BlackBerry’s backend product offerings, thus helping the company to survive it its hardware sales plummet.

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. 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.

Like BlackBerry, Good has a very strong presence in enterprises and governments around the world and, with this transaction, BlackBerry will enhance its sales and distribution capabilities and further grow its enterprise software revenue stream.

Devices running Apple’s iOS have long dominated Good Technology’s customer base. The company noted in its most recent quarterly Mobility Index Report that iOS accounted for 64 percent of all activations on its network.

Source: BlackBerry