Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) are partnering to create a new RIM-hosted BlackBerry enterprise service available for Microsoft's Office 365 cloud computing suite.

RIM said the move will save corporate customers money, enhance security and increase the pace of new BlackBerry services rollouts. The partnership, which is still being tested but should go live in the next few months, will afford enterprises the option of moving management of their BlackBerry Enterprise Servers offsite to remote data centers that will connect via the cloud to RIM's servers.

RIM expects about one-fourth of its large corporate customers to put their data into the cloud by the end of 2011 with that number rising to half by 2012, Jim Tobin, RIM's senior vice president of software and business services, told Bloomberg.

"It's a more efficient model for everyone," Tobin said. "As the smartphone starts to handle more of the work effort versus a desktop, and now you add the tablet, that's the time" to move toward cloud computing. The change also means that customers won't have to purchase and maintain BlackBerry Enterprise Servers. 

In response to critics who question whether RIM would benefit more from turning its servers into one that can handle more than just BlackBerry devices such as Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone and Android phones, Tobin told Reuters that such a focus isn't the right move for RIM at this point.

"That doesn't close the door to later bridging out into other things," he said.

For more:
- see this Bloomberg article
- see this Dow Jones Newswires article (sub. req.)
- see this Reuters article

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