The team-up extends to Microsoft's Azure cloud platform. BlackBerry Dynamics and a handful of other services are now available through Azure for those outfits that mostly live in a Microsoft world.

The two are betting that this alliance will be particularly helpful for banks, governments, health care providers and others that often count BlackBerry and Microsoft as customers. Of course, it's also a hedge against Google -- both of them see G Suite and other Google services as a threat to their bottom line, and working together could give them an edge where they might struggle on their own.