Enterprise Mobility & the Connected Worker Blog




EMM: All Grown Up, but Where to Next?

by Eric Klein | 06/24/2016

The level of competition in the EMM market is on the rise and has forced vendors to reposition their solution portfolios, pricing models, and has even led to several notable market exits. Intel Security announced the end of life (EOL) for its McAfee Enterprise Mobility Management solutions; Globo PLC was forced to vacate the EMM market as it was caught falsifying data and misrepresenting its financial position, and Oracle’s attempt to build an EMM platform around its Bitzer Mobile acquisition seems to have faded. While the weaknesses in these vendors’ mobility and go-to-market strategies have become apparent, other vendors are thriving in the EMM market by working closely with device manufacturers, complementary security ISVs, and key integration partners; and most importantly, by expanding their R&D budgets and shortening their innovation cycles. This has not only led to getting products to market more quickly, but has helped several vendors firmly establish themselves in the EMM market.


Who’s Winning?


The top three vendors in the EMM market (VMware, BlackBerry and MobileIron) held more than 55% of the market’s revenues heading into 2016. VMware has gained share by moving quickly to integrate AirWatch’s solution into its product portfolio and through sales execution. The company was also very successful in mining for opportunities to upsell mobility across its customer base. AirWatch also possessed a strong EMM brand prior to the acquisition—this also appears to have helped in winning customers that were not entirely satisfied with their primary EMM vendors (21% of the respondents to our EMM survey indicated they switched from their primary vendor in the past 24 months). While there is significant customer overlap, BlackBerry gained significant market share by acquiring Good Technology, and MobileIron continues to demonstrate it can compete with its larger rivals.


Where to Next?


The EMM market continues to benefit from a vibrant ecosystem of mobile-first (and security-adept) ISVs that offer complementary capabilities. EMM vendors have learned that their customers have diverse requirements; some focusing on strong authentication solutions, granular app-level policy controls, and network access control. EMM vendors are well aware of the need to preserve the user experience that customers have become accustomed to using consumer mobile applications—the recent enhancements and integrations to productivity suites and applications show that vendors are listening to customers and developing products with user experience (UX) in mind. However, parity in the EMM market had made differentiation increasingly difficult given that Apple’s closed operating system approach has essentially stifled innovation and integration with Google’s Android for Work program is required. While Microsoft is gaining traction, meaningful enterprise adoption of Windows 10 is still several years away.


While the EMM market is healthy, participating vendors must recognize the technology shifts that are happening within their customers IT infrastructure. Organizations are finally implementing best practices for mobile architecture, user experience, security policies, and standards; as they make progress across these fronts, they will quickly discover that this will require more advanced and integrated solutions from their technology partners.


Next-generation solutions must not only be endpoint agnostic, but also able to compile data from all potential sources across network elements, including email and web gateways, mobile devices, software and applications, virtual environments, and the cloud. EMM vendors should continue to build on their endpoint agnostic platforms and their ability to compile data from disparate sources, as their customers’ needs shift. Going forward, organizations will greatly benefit from enhanced visibility into their endpoint environments for help in identifying potential threats, and for the ability to enforce consistency in policies.


Our upcoming annual EMM report will be released shortly, and will include an updated Temperature Check of the market. Stay tuned.

View the 2017 Enterprise Mobility & Connected Devices Research Outline to learn more.