PatentlyApple:

At a BlackBerry event held earlier today in San Francisco they announced a new management-services partnership with rival Samsung Electronics. This is the very first time that the two companies have teamed up for a major product. The new partnership is designed to compete head-on with the new Apple-IBM alliance.

Fantastic idea. It further legitimizes the concept of an enterprise/consumer product partnership and gives enterprise managers a valid alternative to IBM and Apple. And by valid, I mean, who in their right mind would choose Samsung/BlackBerry over Apple/IBM? Where’s the beef in the Samsung/BlackBerry alliance? Certainly not with the malware riddled Android.

Samsung’s Knox system, which offers a suite of secure work applications, will run on BlackBerry’s new server, known as BES12, the companies said in a statement today.

Last year it was noted by InfoWorld that Samsung’s “Knox is their way to get past IT’s legitimate concerns over Android’s generally weak security and join Apple’s iOS and BlackBerry in the golden circle of trustworthy mobile devices.” This new alliance will now open more doors for Samsung and BlackBerry.

Ah, Knox. Anyone considering a Knox solution might want to read this first: After gaining U.S. government approval, Samsung Knox security for Android found to be “completely compromised”.