As the year has turned again, it is time to take a look at where the Mobile Device Management market stands at present and to take a moment to speculate the changes the future might bring. We can now see that two major events from last year are affecting the MDM industry: the discontinuation of Nokia Intellisync, already released at the end of 2008, and the launch of new device platforms, Google Android and Nokia’s Maemo. Naturally the economic downturn has had its influence on the industry, as to all businesses in general. Organisations are hesitating much more to purchase new solutions, but on the other hand they are now more eager to seek cost savings whenever possible. We have been discussing the effects of the Intellisync discontinuation in previous blog entries, so this time we will concentrate much more on the new device platforms that will definitely shake up the mobile world in the following years.
As a result of the new device platforms, we now see a greater diversification within the mobile industry that will also affect the development of mobile device management solutions. This diversification had already started last year when the iPhone and Blackberry increased their share in the mobile market. As Android and Maemo will definitely attract business users, in the future there might be even five different device platforms which could all be managed with one MDM solution. Unquestionably this will be one of the greatest challenges in the development of mobile device management solutions in the next few years. Building and maintaining support for a completely new device platform requires continuous investments in new resources and knowhow. Until recently only Symbian and Windows Mobile have been the key platforms to which MDM support was needed. The third business device, Blackberry by RIM has had its own mobile device management which comes along when purchasing such a device, though we are often requested for support for Blackberry as well. As there will be a demand to support these three new device platforms in the future; Android, Maemo and iPhone, it’s going to mean a great deal of extra work and new challenges for the MDM vendors. Each device platform functions in its own unique way and therefore the work done with the currently supported device platforms cannot be replicated to the new platforms. When calculating the additional working hours needed for the building and maintenance of a new platform support platform, the change is significant.
At some point there should be a clearer distinction between business devices and the normal consumer devices, especially when building the image of the device in people’s minds. This distinction will also hopefully make the work of mobile device management vendors easier, as there would be a more limited set of devices to support. The core logic behind the devices is different in business devices compared to consumer ones. In clear consumer devices, of which the iPhone at the moment is a good example, the “boss” is always the device user. Therefore it is not even possible to build comprehensive mobile device management support to that device, as at the moment it does not allow silent operations without the user involvement. For example if you wanted to wipe the device when it is lost, you can only do that if the device user first accepts the tasks. With that logic the whole wipe functionality is pretty useless. In business devices there must be a possibility to centrally and remotely control the device by the enterprise, i.e. the enterprise being the “boss”. Therefore the business devices need to allow silent operations and some level of restrictions for the device usage if needed.
The same distinction between consumer and business devices should also happen in the minds of enterprises’ key IT decision makers, so that they would more carefully consider which devices the employees can really use in their work. This is both a device security issue, as well as an issue for the device administration efficiency and practicality. These decisions also involve the selection of only a few device models that are in use within the organisations at any given time. This way the mobile device management will be as simple as possible for enterprises and allowing mobile device management vendors to concentrate in developing state-of-the art MDM solutions for those devices that are truly meant for business use.
The future will show how the new device platforms will succeed in the mobile market and which ones will be the winners within the business devices. We will watch the situation closely and develop the support to our SyncShield solution to those device platforms that really will be the core platforms of business devices. Overall, despite the economic downturn, we have faced a promising growth in MDM, which we see continuing in 2010. So, an interesting year is definitely coming for the mobile device management industry and we look forward to see what will happen. We wish you all a successful and interesting year!
