Enterprise Mobility & Connected Devices Blog

On December 27, a firm called Synchronoss Technologies acquired NewBay, a wholly owned subsidiary of Research in Motion Limited. In consideration for the acquisition, Synchronoss paid $55.5 million in cash to RIM, and there was no assumption of cash or debt. The transaction closed at the end of the fourth quarter of 2012. Synchronoss provides software-based activation and mobile content management solutions for mobile devices. Read more

Established mobile software categories such as mobile device management (MDM) and telecom expense management (TEM) have not only matured, but are being blended with “new” mobile categories such as mobile application, security and content management. These formerly adjacent enterprise mobility solution areas are being integrated by an increasingly broad range of vendors, and are marketed as enterprise mobility management or EMM. Read more

Earlier this month, Dish Network Corporation instantly expanded beyond pay-tv, when the U.S. Federal Communications Commission announced that Dish has been granted a portion of spectrum originally designated for satellite-phone transmissions, but now may be converted for use as cellphone service. Dish is not jumping immediately into the wireless market, but restrictions upon the spectrum by the FCC (To avoid interference with adjacent spectrum, a portion is not available for cellular, and there are build out requirements for population coverage that must be met by the 4 year mark and even higher coverage levels at 7 years) as well as recent acquisition moves by T-Mobile and Sprint will be drivers for Dish to position itself quickly for its next move. Read more

After monitoring the rugged mobile market and witnessing the consolidation trend that has been taking the market by storm for the past few years (e.g. Honeywell's acquisition of EMS Technologies, Inc and Motorola Solutions' acquisition of PSION), here at VDC Research, we were expecting 2012 to bring us more in terms of acquisitions - and the month of December did not disappoint us. On Monday, Honeywell International Inc. (NYSE: HON) announced that it would acquire Intermec Inc. (NYSE: IN) for about $600 million in cash ($10 per share). Read more

On November 29 at the L.A. Auto Show, Sprint announced a new product dubbed Velocity that is an in-vehicle communications platform for automotive manufacturers. The in-dashboard product will have capabilities to deliver music, news, weather, sports and other infotainment features, security, navigation, remote connections for mobile devices, emergency services and engine diagnostics. Sprint will support global deployment via its many partnerships with multiple network providers, and let a customer connect an embedded head unit or mobile phones to applications like voice-activated texting and e-mail. Read more

"Our top priority is a focused, coherent mobile strategy," declared, Marissa Mayer on October 22, 2012 during her first investor call as CEO of Yahoo!, which included the comment, "we'll have to be a predominantly mobile company". Given Yahoo's diminished market share for search engine, what opportunity exists for Yahoo in a mobile context? Read more

On November 18, Cisco announced its intent to acquire Meraki - a startup leading the move to cloud-based networking - for ~$1.2B in cash.  Meraki solutions enable centralized, cloud-based management of on-premise networking solutions. Read more

Even before Facebook declared, "The biggest mistake we made as a company was betting too much on HTML5 as opposed to native.", there had been much debate about the viability of developing mobile applications on HTML5. When an e-mail came to a colleague with the message:  Don't Miss Out:  Try our new NYTimes Web App for iPad free; my thoughts were, hey, here's a web app being boldly promoted by a content leader formerly known for a native app. Read more

To realize the enterprise mobility vision, there are many elements to building the mobile enabled enterprise. Albeit not limited to, but core elements of any mobile enterprise strategy include mobile security and the application distribution infrastructure. At MobileCon 2012, VDC had the opportunity for a briefing with Symantec on their new offerings designed to accelerate enterprise mobility initiatives. Read more

Several years ago I quipped that for enterprise mobility to expand beyond a niche collection of point solutions supporting line of business workflows, large enterprise software vendors needed to ante up and make mobility a core competence. Well SAP has done exactly that. Through acquisitions of Sybase, Syclo and others, SAP has made a big statement around mobility and its relevance to the company’s future direction. Earlier this year at SAPPHIRE all the focus was around mobility, the cloud and HANA in memory computing. So how far have we come? Is enterprise mobility ready for primetime? Read more

On October 12th, AirWatch (the plaintiff) initiated a lawsuit (case number: 1:12-cv-03571) in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia against a primary competitor, MobileIron (the defendant). The filing includes serious allegations which very clearly articulate MobileIron's intent to convert trade secrets belonging to AirWatch to its economic benefit. Read more

On Wednesday, October 10, RIM took the stage at MobileCon in San Diego, and CIO, Robin Beinfait, delivered the value proposition of the BlackBerry 10 Platform for the enterprise. RIM's keynote had a heavy focus on platform features that RIM believes are differentiators in the market. Through this lens, I thought RIM made a clear acknowledgement of their strategy in the mobile market. Read more

While final decisions on the Apple vs. Samsung Lawsuit are not expected until a ruling scheduled for December 6, there are some clear implications for both the software and hardware market. Despite the recent verdict from the lawsuit that Samsung's hardware infringed on Apple's intellectual property, VDC Research does not believe that Samsung is the primary target of Apple. It's Google. A once happy relationship has bee on the rocks and now is broken.  Read more

According to a recent release by the WSJ , Nokia and Oracle have signed a deal giving Oralce customers access to the location services and mapping technologies developed by Nokia. This will reportedly be announced at a session during Monday's OracleWorld event in San Francisco. Given Oracle's clear hold on the enterprise market, this represents a keen break for Nokia as the company expands to target enterprise customers.  Read more

On September 24, Clearklake Capital Group - a 6 year old investment firm - announced its acquisition of substantially all assets of Mformation Technologies. Mformation Technologies, founded in 1999, has become a key player in today's MDM market. Clearlake Capital has announced the renaming of the company to Mformation (dropping "Technologies"), but confirmed that the company will retain its current New Jersey headquarters and most of its current management & operations team. Read more

VDC Research recently published Strategic Insights 2012: Field Mobility Solutions Report as part of its Enterprise Mobility Vertical & Applications Markets Research Service. Some key findings from this research include:

Hardware requirements are changing in field mobility organizations - Both field service and field sales organizations are looking to deploy tablets as a result of the real estate that they can get from the large display size. While the notebooks used to dominate these markets (in terms of rugged large from factor devices), the portability element is making tablets a much viable choice. The trend with equipping mobile workers with multiple devices continue to receive traction. The demand for having a mobile device at the point of interaction with the customer in addition to an in-vehicle solution is on the rise. Read more

Given the many innovations we've seen from Apple, transforming the mobile user experience, the company's market leadership is well-deserved. And yet, while Apple currently plays a commanding role in today's mobile market, the company faces a sizeable challenge in maintaining its image as the innovative leader in mobile. Read more

Ask any mobile consumer what processor is powering their device - chances are, they will come up empty. Bottom line, regardless of Qualcomm's innovations in mobile, they haven't heard of the Snapdragon. As much as Nvidia has invested to grow its strength in mobile graphics, "Tegra" is a word recognizable to few. Read more

Founded in 2002, Acronis International grew rapidly to become a strong player in the market for data storage and backup software. The company's suite of data protection products have primarily served the home and SME markets, with Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 its core product line. As the data storage software market has evolved and matured, Acronis has invested to grow its presence in the cloud storage market. The evolution of cloud storage and virtualization technologies enabled a clear opportunity for Acronis to expand its focus and grow the size of its customer market. Read more

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has recently issued a multi-million dollar RFP for a variety of integrated MDM-oriented mobile solutions. As stated in their RFP and PWS, the Agency plans to award its next-generation and enterprise-grade mobility contract to a single vendor via a blanket purchase agreement (vendors may propose a proprietary solution or one built through partnerships with other providers). The document makes it clear that the agency recognizes that its workforce is being impacted by BYOD. Read more

On Monday, Trimble announced its agreement to acquire TMW Systems, a vendor offering transportation and logistics software, for $335 million in cash.  The two companies have worked closely in the past, integrating their solutions for many customers – this acquisition will see Trimble expand the overall reach of TMW’s transportation management software to its global customer base. Read more

On Thursday, August 23, 22 companies across the mobile and wireless ecosystem launched the In-Location Alliance.  While GPS technology has evolved into a necessity for many of us – both consumers and enterprises – the capacity of GPS technology to navigate indoors is extremely limited.  Thus these 22 companies have joined forces to focus on “creating solutions offering high accuracy, low power consumption, mobility, implementation and usability,” Nokia. Read more

In comparison to desktop PCs, the number of threats on mobile platforms is actually low (today), but the pace of device proliferation has changed the traditional definition of a network endpoint, and has made smartphones and tablets an attractive target for those seeking to do harm. While device manufacturers continue to enhance the embedded security that resides on their hardware with each successive release, cyber criminals are altering their tactics and are keen on taking advantage of flaws in mobile platforms and applications. Another complication for corporate IT is the fragmented state of today’s mobile OS landscape. Read more

This Monday, shortly after announcing the company’s participation in a Series B round of funding for startup Magnet Systems, HTC revealed that the company would recognize an estimated $40M loss as OnLive – a U.S. cloud gaming service in which HTC had invested in February 2011 – has been forced to restructure. HTC’s $35.4M investment in Magnet Systems indicates that the company has no plans of playing it safe. Rather, as social, mobile, and cloud technologies continue to drive strong opportunities in the market, HTC appears determined to continue down this high-risk high-reward path.  Read more

According to an internal HP memo published by The Verge, it appears HP will be developing a new Mobility Global Business Unit, with a chief objective of entering the consumer tablet market. The memo was circulated within the company by HP’s Todd Bradley – EVP of the Printing and Personal Systems Group. Bradley will reportedly manage this unit as a part of his current role, while former Nokia employee Alberto Torres. Read more

One of the few advantages enterprises may recognize in a weak or recovering economy is the new seeds of creativity, ingenuity and innovation sown across many industries. A prime example of this is the wave of “consumerization of IT.” Whereas technology has historically entered the enterprise before trickling into consumer markets, advances in mobile technology have seen many companies begin to accept, and even cultivate the use of consumer-grade technologies in the workplace. Although these devices are not designed with the same rugged shell, bulletproof security features, and back-end integration capabilities of today’s leading rugged mobile devices, deployment of Android tablets, BlackBerries, and iPhone devices may often facilitate tremendous cost savings for an organization. Read more

We all love our mobile devices. They (many of us now have two — usually a smartphone and tablet — some of us [like my wife] have a COPE [corporate owned personally enabled] smartphone, and a personal smartphone and tablet) are inevitably never more than a few inches aways from us — this of course means that they are with us both at home and at work. Read more

Chances are if you work (or have worked) in a marketing, product management, or IT role, you've come across your share of acronyms — the mobile boom we are in the midst of has the enterprise mobility ecosytem in full acronym bloom. While this isn't a surprise given the astronomic growth in adoption of smartphones and tablets that we are seeing, if you've been in the workforce for say a decade or more, you've seen your share of acronyms come and go. However, as a long-time industry watcher I can say that there is one salient acronym that will also eventually "go" but whose impact will be felt in the modern workplace for years to come — no surprise, I'm referring to BYOD.  Read more

LANDesk has made its second acquistion since becoming a stand-alone business in September of 2010 (the company acquired analytics specialist Managed Planet in April of 2012) with the acquisition of Wavelink on June 20th. The company has changed hands several times in the last decade — LANDesk had been spun-out of Intel in 2002, was then aquired by Avocent in 2006 — Avocent was then acquired by Emerson Electric in 2009, who sold the firm to Thoma Bravo LLC in 2010. Thoma Bravo LLC is a private equity investment firm that appears to be increasingly focused on mobile-oriented companies to bolster its software and technology portfolio. Read more

Tropical storm Debby and the Heat's victory parade aside, I was fortunate to spend a couple of days at IQPC's 2012 Enterprise Mobility Exchange in Miami on June 25 and 26 (full disclosure: I sit on their Advisory Council). The event is designed primarily as a high impact networking forum and attracts largely C-level and VP-level decision makers from Enterprise 1000 firms. Some very interesting topics were included as part of the conference agenda and resulted in a lot of thought provoking discussions. Some of the more interesting included. Read more

This past Monday, Microsoft confirmed its $1.2 billion acquisition of four-year-old Yammer – a social networking company targeted at the B2B market. According to Microsoft, Yammer will join the Microsoft Office Division, but will continue to be overseen by Yammer’s CEO and co-founder David Sacks. In a press release, Microsoft stated.  Read more

On Monday, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile announced that the two companies have agreed to a spectrum sale/swap arrangement. Awaiting FCC approval, this deal would enable the vendors to swap portions of their spectrum in the AWS (Advanced Wireless Services) band, while also seeing “an overall net transfer of spectrum from Verizon Wireless to T-Mobile and a cash payment from T-Mobile to Verizon Wireless.” From the outside, this appears to be an attractive deal to all parties. Read more

On June 15 Motorola Solutions announced its all cash transaction deal to acquire PSION for a remarkable $200 million. PSION has a long history in the mobile computing industry and was behind many iconic devices - remember its Series 3 and Series 5 clamshell PDAs and the latter's revolutionary keyboard or its EPOC operating system which eventually became the platform for Symbian? More recently PSION focused on ruggedized solutions for line of business applications across a variety of supply chain, logistics and field mobility market segments. PSION's position in the rugged mobile market is a combination of its own success WorkAbout handheld device - a widely deployed value-based device - and its merger with Canada-based Teklogix in 2000. Read more

With the announcement of Microsoft's Surface tablet the company with one of the most storied histories in the tablet market is 'back' in the game. Stealing a page from Google's playbook the Surface is a Microsoft developed device running its yet to be released Windows 8 RT (the version running on ARM processors). A Windows 8 Pro version running on a third generation Intel Core processor is expected 90 days following the initial release. There is much to like yet much to also be concerned about regarding this product announcement. Read more

Although iOS 6 won't be available to the public until later this fall – as per usual, it will be released with the next generation iPhone – the first beta build was released to developers in conjunction with Apple’s WWDC event earlier this week. As always, Apple’s announcements attracted strong buzz in the consumer markets – few of the 200+ updates, however, translate to support enterprise mobile deployments.  Below, VDC has highlighted the top five enterprise-relevant applications to be updated in iOS6.  Read more

The city of New Orleans hosted the spring edition of the CTIA conference earlier this month — the last time this event was hosted at the Ernest N. Morial convention center was in 2005. While the event continues to attract a broad range of exhibitors focused on all things mobile — while CTIA doesn't release attendance figures, the concensus is that the number shrank from the ~40K that attended the 2011 Spring event in Orlando. Schedule wise, the event is challenged, as many enterprise mobility-oriented participants have had a busy first half of the year (event wise) with must-attend shows for a good segment of the ecosystem.  Read more

Recent conversations with various public safety units – including police, EMS, and firefighter – highlighted a key barrier that has slowed adoption of consumer-grade tablets into the fire department – the lack of Android and iOS applications to support key workflows in this market. Many police departments, on the other hand, have experimented more with laptop and tablet technologies, and thus have drawn more attention from commercial vendors offering applications and hardware packages.  Read more

With the ever predictable siren for the ‘year of mobile’ it may have finally arrived. While it has been more of a progression than an overnight sensation there have been some fairly significant recent events that have propelled the market forward. We finally have the mobile devices that are capable of supporting engaging mobile applications and with the advent of the tablet we a truly mobile device with sufficient display real estate. Another major development – that has previously been woefully absent – has been the support and direct investment in mobile solutions by the larger enterprise software vendor community.  Read more

As VDC prepares for publication of the Managed Services & Hosted Applications report in late May 2012, our team conducted a survey of IT decision makers regarding their firm’s perceptions and overall adoption of mobile managed services. Over 400 respondents across a range of vertical markets participated this survey, which yielded interesting findings. As the landscape of mobile managed services solutions and solution providers continues to evolve, study of respondents’ perceptions around these providers (e.g. SIs, OEMs, mobile ISVs, carriers) is one of the key objectives for our research of this market. Read more

While Intel’s brand continues to lead in the PC market, the evolution of today’s mobile marketplace has seen a strong majority of consumer smartphones adopt an ARM-based CPU. The ARM architecture was developed by ARM Holdings – a British semiconductor company that licenses its processor technology to today’s leading mobile vendors – including Apple, Freescale, LG, Marvell, Microsoft, Nintendo and Qualcomm. In contrast with Intel’s x86 processors, ARM technology has gained widespread adoption for its more reduced power output.  Read more

When you are aiming to grow your mobility business as agressively as SAP is, a strategic M&A strategy is likely to / expected to be part of the equation. Indeed, based on the acquisition of Sybase in 2010, and now Syclo, VDC estimates that SAP's mobility revenues could potentially reach $500M this year. However, as we all know — the software giant is definitely aiming higher. Read more

Through the course of our research, we are exposed to some of the best and brightest minds in the mobile industry – many of them part of large, multi-million (or billion) dollar firms.  Occasionally, and more interestingly, we stumble across smaller startups with innovative, disruptive, transformative solutions, and yet have managed to fly under the radar.  Below, we’ve profiled several vendors we have been looking at recently. Read more

As the market gets flooded by mobile payment solution providers in the recent years, the receptivity for accepting mobile payments has increased. Based on our end-user research, 37.1% of the retailers claimed that they are either using or currently evaluating mobile payment/ POS solutions. While the interest for more consumer-oriented solutions such as location based services is higher, the security and compliance requirements for mobile payment solutions are a lot more complicated. Read more

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.  Read more

In one of the more refreshing RIM calls, new CEO Thorsten Heins pledges a refocused RIM on the enterprise market. While in the ensuing days the company was quick to add that it was NOT abandoning the consumer market, it was saying that it could not keep pace with its fervent change. Is this the right move for RIM? Is this the only move? While RIM still enjoys a strong share in many enterprise and government sectors, as illustrated by the company's first quarterly loss, recent trends are not positive. RIM has also had success with its lower cost devices in emerging markets, a position it is also having trouble holding on to.  Read more

Given the heinous prices of books – and especially textbooks – these days, as well as the growing adoption of mobile devices (from netbook to smartphone); we would logically expect strong traction in the e-book market. And yet, invented in the mid-1960s, the e-book has yet to truly take off and own its position as a disruptive technology. No doubt the leading publishing houses have foreseen the potential for e-books to threaten their margins and sales. What is it, then, that has impeded the rise of the e-book?   Read more

Battling tough barriers to adoption - including concerns over security, connectivity, and robustness of the app ecosystem – consumer-grade devices and mobile applications are seeing increased toleration and adoption in military.  As a major part of the army’s new Connecting Soldiers to Digital Apps (CSDA) initiative, the army has launched a prototype-phase mobile app marketplace. Read more

As this past week saw RIM lose its dominant position in the company’s home market (Canada), the BlackBerry Partners Fund sees an influx of $150 million into what will become the “BlackBerry Partners Fund II.”  The initial BlackBerry Partners Fund was founded in May of 2008, backed by Thomson Reuters, RBC, and of course, RIM (BlackBerry).  Curiously, while this VC fund incorporates the “BlackBerry” brand into its name, and was launched at a time when RIM was reaching its peak in the market, managers of the fund have defined the BlackBerry Partners Fund as being device-agnostic. Read more

Many market watchers like myself have been predicting that consolidation was looming in the MDM space - with Symantec's acquisition of Odyssey Software, we finally have some validation. The MDM segment of the enterprise mobility ecosystem is definitely one of the more mature and crowded ones. Odyssey's tenure, sizeable customer base and well regarded solutions made it an attractive target for acquisition.  Read more

Symantec's acquisition of Odyssey Software is a clear signal that the firm is making enterprise mobility a key element of its corporate strategy, and that the lines between IT Security, risk and compliance requirements and mobile solutions are blurring. The company's recent release strengthens its mobile solution range includes enhanced native capabilities for both Windows Phone 7, Android, as well as data loss prevention and managed PKI service integration. Read more

As consumers, our primary criteria in selecting a mobile network operator would likely encompass three key attributes: low-cost contracts, widespread network coverage, and high-speed data transfer. In the U.S, leading carriers AT&T and Verizon Wireless (VZW) drive strong competition in each of these areas and, with strong network buildout, have achieved a competitive advantage in the market against their smaller rivals. The recent release of Apple’s 3rd. gen. iPad with support for only these two carriers underscores this disparity between top-tier leaders AT&T and VZW and smaller players in the market (e.g. Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile).  Read more

Having grown accustomed to their role as the gatekeepers to enterprise mobility, IT managers worldwide have been swept off their feet by the disruptive, evolving force of the BYOD (bring your own device) trend. Last week’s Consumerization of IT in the Enterprise (CITE) event, held in San Francisco, represented the launch of what is expected to be an annual conference hosted by IDG Enterprise. The CITE conference attracted CEOs, CIOs, and top IT decision-makers worldwide, all eager to share insights and experiences around the consumerization of IT.  Read more

Last week’s annual RSA Conference attracted over 350 exhibiting companies, each anxious to reveal the latest and greatest advances in information security. While “Big Data” was a primary theme at the show, mobile ISVs focusing on security may have stolen the spotlight as we saw a number of high profile vendors announce new partnerships, marketing initiatives, product offerings, and technological advances in mobile security. Below, we’ve highlighted several announcements that caught our attention for the impact we expect to see on the ecosystem of mobile security vendors and solutions.   Read more

Infor has had "mobile" on its roadmap for some time now — the enterprise applications vendor has long been aware that it needed to add mobile capabilities to its product portfolio, and has finally done so with the unveiling of two native iOS mobile applications (Android versions will be released later this year) and a cloud based platform. The applications dubbed "Road Warrior" (a lightweight CRM application), and "ActivityDeck" (a social application that keeps track of Infor applications by sending real-time alerts, and enables on-to-go approvals of pending requests) are just the first steps for the company's broader mobile strategy which appears to be focused on interoperability.   Read more

This past Thursday, in an event shrouded in secrecy and laden with anticipation, Apple announced the launch of three apps designed to transform the role of technology in education. Honoring Steve Jobs’ passion for education, Apple set lofty goals for these newly released apps. Rather than defining the financial opportunity for these transformative products, Apple opened this event with an overview of current challenges we face in education.   Read more

What likely was way overdue Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie stepped down as co-CEOs of RIM. However, in an unusual twist, they were also responsibly for selecting their successor, COO Thorsten Heins, a five year RIM veteran. Needless to say, the overwhelming reaction to this selection was not positive as many expect 'much of the same' with insider Thorsten at the helm (one viable scenario to move forward with an Heins is that he would be better positioned to set up RIM for a sale). RIM as the next Kodak is the easy observation to make here. And while RIM clearly has its work cut out for it and the prevailing trends are pointing in the wrong direction the rush to dismiss RIM and its iconic BlackBerry brand is premature. Read more

National Retail Federation Expo 2012 took place in NYC this week and highlighted the future of retail. The attendance from solution providers including hardware, software and services providers was highly significant as well as visitors. Following a strong 2011 performance complemented by the holiday sales, the general outlook for retail remains strong, while the pace is expected to be slower than 2011. Nevertheless, NRF is projecting retail industry growth of 3.4% in 2012 to $2.5 trillion.  Read more

Although Pyxis’ transformation into Verivo Software represents a significant development in the enterprise mobility market, this event underscores a larger transformation we will see play out in the mobile enterprise application platform (MEAP) space this year: consolidation. Earlier this week, after securing $17 million in a round of funding led by Commonwealth Capital Ventures, Pyxis Mobile advanced the company’s rebranding initiatives with the launch of Verivo Software.  Read more

Funding:
appMobi   • January: $6M in Series B funding (angel investors / not identified)
Paydiant • February: $7.6M in Series A funding led by North Bridge Venture Partners and General Catalyst Partners
Apperian • March: $9.5M from North Bridge Venture Parrtners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ iFund, CommonAngels, and LaunchCapital
MobileIron • May: $20M in Series D funding from existing shareholders Foundation Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Storm Ventures
Fixmo  Read more