Telecom Lead America: 65 percent of enterprises will adopt a mobile device management (MDM) solution for their corporate liable users over the next five years.
Through 2017, 90 percent of enterprises will have two or more mobile operating systems to support.
In the past year, many enterprises have moved to Apple’s iOS as their main mobile device platform, with others to follow over the next 12 to 18 months.
Tablets are driving enterprises for adopting MDM. Most companies and users are supporting the tablet for limited usage, typically for email and personal information management (PIM) functions.
Users are demanding for enterprise applications to support tablets, usually through either enterprise or application provider development.
Users are already synchronizing corporate content into public clouds for later retrieval on the devices.
“The era of the PC has ended. Employees are becoming more mobile and looking for ways to still be connected wherever work needs to be done,” said Phil Redman, research vice president at Gartner.
“The convenience and productivity gains that mobile devices bring are too tempting for most companies and their employees. Securing corporate data on mobile devices is a big challenge, but one that companies must embrace. Enterprises are struggling with how to support and secure this dynamic workforce,” Redman added.
By implementing a structured support system with varied support levels, IT organizations can shield business information and enforce policies about data movement between the device and the corporate network, while enabling users to adopt the device they deem most appropriate.
Organizations will find it hard to achieve an efficient mobile-support system if all platforms are not managed the same way under enterprise requirements. Like PCs, mobile devices are forms of client access devices, and the policies for them should be similar in strength but optimized for mobile usage, to those governing PCs.
As mobile devices continue to displace traditional PCs, enterprises will look to their existing MDM systems to support more devices and enterprise applications and data. MDM vendors are moving beyond security, to support enterprise and third-party applications, data and content. In the next two years, we will continue to see MDM platforms broaden out and become more enterprise mobile system management platforms, not just for devices alone.
