Blackberry spends $425 million in cash to buy a mobile e-mail security company

Blackberry is spending $425 million cash to acquire Good Technology, a mobile security company.

Blackberry explained the deal in a release saying:

Good will bring complementary capabilities and technologies to BlackBerry, including secure applications and containerization that protects end user privacy.

From Blackberry's perspective, the company only has ~$2 billion in cash. So, this is a relatively big buy. But it fits with Blackberry's enterprise focus.

The deal comes as some of Blackberry's clients are shifting away from issuing handsets to workers.

JPMorgan is actively collecting Blackberrys from its staff and the bank, along with others, has already been pushing its workers onto the Good platform.

At the same time, the company's share of global market share for cell phone sales has been slipping consistently.

While the deal carries an enormous price tag; Good Technology's investors aren't scoring a huge payday. The app had raised nearly $300 million in funding from private equity and venture capital firms since its founding in 1996.