Microsoft Corp. Monday announced it’s teaming up with BlackBerry Ltd. to use its security software along with its cloud and productivity tools. The idea is to provide additional levels of security for enterprises beyond what’s needed by regular consumers.

The new offering, called BlackBerry Enterprise Bridge, allows the two companies’ shared customers, which includes many large banks, law firms, government agencies and healthcare firms, to run Microsoft software inside a secure mobile application container called BlackBerry Dynamics.

“We saw a need for a hypersecure way for our joint customers to use native Office 365 mobile apps,” said Carl Wiese, president of global sales at BlackBerry.

BlackBerry is best known for the mobile phones it used to make in the days when smartphones were just beginning to emerge. The company failed to make the transition and saw its market share collapse, but has since reinvented itself as a provider of enterprise-grade security software.

Microsoft, which also lost out in the smartphone race despite buying Nokia Corp.’s handset business, benefits from the partnership as it gains a wider potential user base for its Office 365 apps.

The partnership builds on an existing relationship between the companies that began in 2016, when BlackBerry started using Microsoft’s Azure cloud to host some of its security services. As part of today’s announcement, BlackBerry said its entire Secure suite of security services will now run on Azure.

For what it’s worth, Wall Street seemed to be rather enamored with the news, with Blackberry’s share price rising just over 5 percent almost immediately after the announcement was made.

Image: mohamed_hassan/Pixabay