Over the past few years, several of the innovative solutions which have emerged from mobility-oriented ISVs have not only proven to be commercially viable, but have quickly become important and increasingly required components for a complete end-to-end enterprise-grade mobility solution. The growing variety and similarity of market leading mobility solutions are making vendor selection decisions less clear and have created the opportunity for channel constituents to offer a blend or bundle of services from best-of-breed mobile-oriented ISVs. An opportunity has also developed for established ISVs with mobile strategies to round out their product portfolios by developing their channels partnerships. The core components of an end-to-end mobility solution were initially somewhat narrow in scope - however, the advent of BYOD has created the need for a broad range of solution components that goes well beyond MDM. As smartphone and tablets gain acceptance as viable application platforms, IT personnel will require solutions that cover app development, security, remote access to corporate databases and applications, as well as a cost-effective way to manage mobile app provisioning, decommissioning and integration with existing business processes.
While carriers and systems integrators (SIs) have an opportunity to play a key role in the channel for a bundled package of core enterprise-grade mobility solutions, tier 1 players (e.g., AT&T, Verizon, Accenture, IBM, and HP) continue to demonstrate an inability to move quickly in establishing working channel relationships with mobile ISVs. This in turn is creating an opportunity for tier 2 and 3 SIs, as well as mobile-oriented value-added resellers with integration expertise in mobile software and solutions, (e.g., DecisionPoint, Stratix, and Vox Mobile) to partner with innovative mobile ISVs and offer differentiated and cutting edge mobility solutions to their customers.
M&A strategies will be increasingly important moving forward, as strategic acquisitions can enable a vendor to add core mobility capabilities to their product portfolios and get closer to providing and end-to-end solution to the market. For this reason, we think that additional M&A activity is likely in the coming months...