BlackBerry has announced a new partnership with Microsoft that will see the two companies work together to deliver Microsoft’s suite of mobile productivity apps securely through a new product called BlackBerry Enterprise Bridge.
Enterprise Bridge will allow large enterprise customers like banks, law firms and the like to use Microsoft’s suite of Office apps, including Word, Excel and Powerpoint via BlackBerry Dynamics.
Part of the company’s broader Secure platform, Dynamics provides BlackBerry’s enterprise clients an end-to-end solution for managing the disparate variety of apps their employees need to use to do their work.
Among other benefits, Dynamics works in the background to encrypt app data, ensuring that company information is kept secure. Moreover, any data shared between apps is similarly encrypted. For individual users, Dynamics also makes their lives a bit easier since the platform provides a single login across apps. The platform is compatible with both Android and iOS.
According to BlackBerry, Office 365’s new integration with Dynamics will ensure that any data shared by the apps is consistently secured “to the highest standards and in compliance with corporate and regulatory policies”
“BlackBerry has always led the market with new and innovative ways to protect corporate data on mobile devices,” said Carl Wiese, president of global sales at BlackBerry, in a March 19th press release.
“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.”
As another component of their new partnership, major parts of BlackBerry’s Secure platform, including Dynamics, UEM Cloud, Workspaces and AtHoc, are now integrated with Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.
Alongside its new partnership with Microsoft, BlackBerry also announced several feature additions to BlackBerry Secure.
To start, enterprise users will have access to a new do-not-disturb feature that will prevent email and calendar notifications from pushing to their device after normal business hours (users can disable this feature, if they’re so inclined).
Additionally, BlackBerry is adding a nifty privacy-related feature for BYOD users. When using what doubles their personal phone to make a phone call, BlackBerry Secure will allow enterprise users to hide their personal number. For the person on the other end of the call, they’ll see that employee’s desk number instead.
Other new features are targeted at IT managers and developers. For instance, BlackBerry is adding a variety of user- and feature-level analytics to help developers better understand how their apps are being used.
BlackBerry’s board of directors recently signed CEO John Chen to a five-year extension.
