BlackBerry announced yesterday that they have entered a definitive agreement to acquire Good Technology for $425 million in cash.
BlackBerry CEO John Chen spoke a little at the investors call and spoke a little more with the Globe and Mail on why BlackBerry were buying Good Technology.
Good Technology CEO Christy Wyatt has meanwhile written the following letter to Good employees, partners and customers, explaining what the acquisition means for them.
Here is what she had to say.
“At Good, we have always aspired to delight our customers and deliver the best secure mobility solution in the industry. With your input and support we have accomplished great things over the past couple of years including recognition by Gartner as the leading vendor in the 2015 High Security for Mobile Management report for capabilities such as our app-level encryption, advanced data loss prevention and secure communication among applications. We have redefined the best in class productivity experience with Good Work, grown the largest ecosystem of secured applications and have innovated to solve your most challenging problems including enterprise-grade service management and split billing solutions. Today, you, our Good customers represent more than 50% of the Fortune 100 and more than 6,200 global customers operate our service in over 189 countries delivering more than 2.5 billions messages a week. Along this journey I have asked for your input, feedback and we have worked hard to deliver to your expectations.
Today, I’m pleased to share with you the next chapter in our story as we are announcing that Good Technology will become a part of BlackBerry. Good and BlackBerry have a long history, and it has been an exciting journey to arrive at this point in time. As leaders in enterprise mobility, both Good and BlackBerry share a vision of global secure mobility for the enterprise and both have the experience of supporting global customers at scale and a passion for innovation.
Over the last few weeks, I have worked closely with BlackBerry leadership to bring together the complementary capabilities and best practices from both companies. We believe together, we will be even better positioned to deliver the industry’s best security and full lifecycle mobility management to drive success of your mobile initiatives.
Joining forces enables customers and partners to benefit from the combined decades of secure mobility expertise and deliver the most comprehensive portfolio at global scale. Together, we have more resources and the ability to drive further innovation and high value solutions. The Good Dynamics platform and our broad application suite remains at the heart of our joint solution, and combined with BlackBerry’s enterprise portfolio and trusted global network, will enable us together to deliver a unified secure mobility platform spanning the widest array of endpoints – from smartphones, tablets, PCs, wearables through IoT – to power business productivity any time, anywhere.
As the modern enterprise will continue to include mobile and IoT – the demand for highly secure and broadly scalable solutions will remain paramount to the CIO. Together, we will continue to deliver the security and control you need, the mobile applications your users demand, and the reliability that the business requires. To learn more about how our stronger unified platform will help you, please visit this blog.
We expect this deal to close in BlackBerry’s fiscal Q3, which is at the end of November. You should expect no change in your products and support as a result of this announcement. As we get closer to the close, we will continue to update you and share more information. More importantly, and as always, I welcome your comments and would love your feedback and input. We look forward to continuing to serve your needs and ensure your success.
Thank you again for being a Good partner and for your support.
Best Regards,
Christy Wyatt
Chairman and CEO, Good Technology”
