BlackBerry Ltd. announced yesterday that it is expanding its cross-platform software strategy. Scheduled for availability later this year, the “BlackBerry Experience Suite” will deliver the company’s security, productivity and communication tools to smartphones and tablets running iOS, Android as well as Windows. Among other BlackBerry features, the suite will include their BlackBerry Hub messaging portal, virtual keyboard and security capabilities.

“This is just a very natural evolution of taking our OS, the surfaces and security layers around it and putting it on others’ devices, so that our serviceable market is not only ‘BlackBerry’ devices, but all devices,” said BlackBerry Chief Executive John Chen.

Since the launch of BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) 10, BlackBerry’s mobile device management system for corporate and government client’s, the company has been incorporating cross-platform support for other mobile operating systems. First, in BES10, the company included the ability to manage handsets running Apple Inc.’s iOS and Google Inc.’s Android mobile operating system in addition to BlackBerry 10 and then, with the release of BES12, came support for Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone 8.

In 2013 the company launched Android and iOS versions of its popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) app in an attempt to win back consumers who have migrated to Apple’s iPhone or Android based smartphones and related messaging apps.

BlackBerry will continue to build on its own handset business and the company is slated to announce a new handset on Tuesday at Mobile World Congress.

“I intend to continue to build a hardware business,” Chen told the press. “But there will be a lot of focus on the software business too.”

In a separate, but related announcement, BlackBerry said that it is expanding its partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd by integrating two new BlackBerry enterprise services with Samsung KNOX. The services are WorkLife, which helps companies accurately reimburse employees for work-related call and data costs by splitting work and personal usage on a device, and SecuSuite that lets companies encrypt voice and text communications.

BlackBerry and Samsung announced a partnership to deliver end-to-end security to Android devices used in the enterprise in November.

In a blog post related to the announcement, Chen said, “We will continue to look for opportunities to broaden our software footprint in the market. Our goal is to be wherever our users need and want us, with our software suites, whether that’s on an iPhone or a BlackBerry Classic.”

Image via BlackBerry