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BlackBerry acquires Good Technology for $425 million, accelerates software plans

BlackBerry said it will acquire Good Technology in a move that will accelerate its effort to become a company that revolves around enterprise mobility software.
Written by Larry Dignan, Contributor

BlackBerry on Friday moved to bolster is enterprise mobility management prospects and consolidate the industry a bit with a deal to acquire Good Technology for $425 million in cash.

The company has been working to reinvent itself as one primarily driven by software and the acquisition of Good will go a long way toward that goal. BlackBerry said Good will add $160 million in revenue in the first year.

In a statement, BlackBerry said that Good will give it the assets to offer a unified mobility platform that can manage multiple platforms.

BlackBerry CEO John Chen said Good will enable the company to "enhance its sales and distribution capabilities and further grow its enterprise software revenue stream." Good CEO Christy Wyatt said her company will also fit into BlackBerry's Internet of things plans.

BlackBerry will benefit from the acquisition of Good because it won't have to work hard to convince CIOs it can manage more than its own devices. Sixty four percent of Good's activations are iOS devices and the company also counts Android and Windows in the customer base.

"Our combined product platform will be the industry's broadest and deepest and extend beyond EMM and into the IoT world," Chen said on a call with analysts. "We will have strength across all the mobile operating systems."

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Good also brings containers and secure applications to BlackBerry, which will aim to meld the Good Works technology with Blackberry's own enterprise mobility tools. On the call with analysts Chen admitted that BlackBerry has been weak on containers with other operating systems.

BlackBerry's partnership with Samsung around its KNOX technology will also blend into Good Dynamics and its partner program.

The challenge for the two companies will revolve around how fast they can integrate the product roadmaps and offerings. Good and BlackBerry have been rivals for years.

Chen made a point to stress the synergy between the two companies, despite the fact that there is not an immediate plan to merge platforms on the front end.

Good has 6,200 companies as customers.

The deal is expected to close in BlackBerry's fiscal third quarter.

Good filed to go public in March, but market turbulence as well as challenges among mobility management players made the BlackBerry deal more enticing. Here's a look at Good's financials.

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