Enterprise Mobility & Connected Devices Blog

June has been a big month for consumer wearable devices – it has seen the Salesforce announce the launch of Salesforce Wear to help build up a wearable-specific ecosystem geared primarily towards smartwatches and augmented vision devices. This month also saw Samsung’s announcement of the Samsung Z – the first smartphone to run on its proprietary Tizen OS, establishing a single platform for its growing family of Gear smartwatches, including the Gear 2, the Neo and the Gear Fit. However, the biggest buzz has come from this week’s announcements at Google’s I/O developer conference. Google had announced its wearable specific OS, Android Wear, in March, but gave more insight this week as to its capabilities and scope. Read more

Google made several important enterprise mobility-oriented announcements at its annual developer conference (Google I/O) earlier this week. The company provided details of its “Android for Work” initiative, which aims to help business users separate personal and corporate data. The effort is being supported by prominent handset OEMs (Samsung, Sony, Lenovo, Huawei and HTC), as well as PC OEMs, including Dell and HP. While these OEMs are eager to work with Google, it is likely that the company had to offer assurances (such as guaranteed timely access software updates and key security enhancements) to ensure a solid roster of vendors for the fall release of its next OS “Android L”. Google’s SVP of Android, Chrome and Apps Sundar Pichai shared key details of the next OS (and announced its beta release to developers), and demonstrated several new enterprise features for enhanced security and privacy. Read more

SAP's CEO Bill McDermott and his broader executive team were consistent in their core message at this year's SAPPHIRE event; the main message: "Simplify everything. Do Anything." SAP's strategy is increasingly centered around cloud delivery, an integrated suite, and sreamlining customer support for large multi-national customers. There is no questioning the strategic importance of the in-memory database technology that SAP has been developing for the last decade. HANA has been front and center at SAPPHIRE since its release in 2010; and continuing to demonstrate the platforms' traction with customers will be key for SAP to prove their viabilty in the cloud computing market. Having long time (and marquee) customers such as John Deere, ConAgra Foods and eBay elegantly articulate their success with HANA certainly helps. Read more

Good Technology hosted its inaugural Good Exchange in NYC on June 3, 2014, an event I had the pleasure of attending. Good has a long and often colorful history in the enterprise mobility market. Perhaps best known for its secure email solutions, the company has evolved considerably as it sets itself up for an IPO. Acquisitions have played prominently with Good acquiring BoxTone in early 2014, a pioneer in the mobile service management space, bookended by today’s announced acquisition Fixmo, a leading provider of mobile security and device integrity solutions. Buttressing these acquisitions include a series of new launches including a secure mobile collaboration app and a trusted authentication framework, consisting of APIs that can be used with two-factor, single sign-on biometric and smartcard authentication modes. Early partners supporting this initiative include EyeVerify, Biometrics Associates, Intercede, Mi-Token and Precise Biometrics. Read more

The IT Security landscape must continue to evolve in response to sea change of user and enterprise behavior that has come with the increased usage of mobile applications. This comes in addition to the continued trend toward cloud computing, an increased reliance on the web for transacting with customers, and the increased sophistication of those looking to exploit IT infrastructures. Bottom line, in corporate settings, mobile users and their devices have become a big security pain point and one that must be addressed. Read more

Google made headlines earlier this week by finalizing an acquisition of Divide (formerly Enterproid); a company specializing in the internalization of a work container within an employee’s personal smartphone.Google has planned to incorporate the Divide feature to future Android releases, thereby strengthening the platforms’ enterprise capabilities as a whole. The acquisition will impact the ecosystem of vendors focusing on mobility management for the enterprise, and will give HW OEMs that compete with Samsung an opportunity to offer a well-integrated containerization solution along with their hardware. The move by Google also portends to a more strategic focus (albeit late) on the enterprise market. Read more

VDC had the opportunity to attend IBM’s Impact event in Las Vegas last week ― the event was well attended (~9,000 attendees) and featured hundreds of breakout sessions that spanned a broad range of technologies. A key theme at the event was what the company described as its ability to help companies become “composable businesses”. The company's keynote speakers were very much in sync with this message and articulated how IBM was positioned to provide its customers with a path to transform their business and help them embrace the “ecosystem of everything.” Read more

Yesterday, Zebra Technologies announced the purchase of Motorola Solutions’ Enterprise business for $3.45 billion.  The acquisition will provide Zebra with the opportunity to access new technology markets in addition to extending its geographical reach and serving 95% of Fortune 500 companies worldwide. More importantly, however, the purchase will broaden Zebra’s product and service portfolio to encompass nearly all areas of data capture and asset tracking, from barcode printing to scanning solutions, mobile computing, and software. Read more

This week, IBM announced the expansion of its MobileFirst Consulting Services, its mobile solution portfolio launched in 2013 to streamline and accelerate enterprise mobile adoption. The announcement highlighted eight services designed to solidify mobile infrastructure consulting, mobile application management, and mobile device procurement and management services.  With this, IBM is further expanding its reach within a market that has matured and consolidated considerably within the past year. Read more

This week, VDC published the results of its quarterly device tracker, which follows both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year numbers for major OEMs both globally and by region. 

Notebooks lag behind other form factors

The rugged market – including notebooks, tablets, handheld computers and forklift terminals – reached $4.1bn in 2013, a 6.1% year-on-year decline from a total of $4.3bn in revenues from 2012. Excluding notebooks the market increased by 1% over 2012. The strongest performing category was rugged tablets which grew by 22% year over year. The impact of consumer-grade smartphones and tablets being used in an enterprise setting continues to make itself felt on a global level, particularly among field mobile workers and for customer-facing applications. Read more

It’s no secret that BlackBerry is working to maintain its relevance in enterprise mobility. CEO John Chen emphasized just last month at Mobile World Congress that the firm had engineered a new strategy to restore customer’s confidence in BlackBerry. Both in Barcelona and at a meeting with analysts in January, Chen has stressed the relationship with enterprise as central to the company’s strategy and success. Potential revenue enhancing opportunities have emerged, such as the news that the company intends to support the Windows Phone platform with its upcoming BES 12 release (BBM support for the Windows Phone platform was also disclosed), and the announcement that Ford will be using the company’s QNX platform for its next-generation Sync system—however, while these initiatives have potential, we see the company’s reluctance to abandon its hardware orientation as hurting its long term prospects. Read more

Apple may have reinforced its lead ahead of Android in the enterprise market with the announcement this week of its new program to facilitate enterprise usage of iOS on a larger scale. Among the biggest changes is the Device Enrollment Program, which frees IT from the previous constraints of Apple Configurator of having to physically interact with the devices individually via USB to configure them for MDM in what the firm is calling a “zero-touch effort for IT.” The enrollment program also solves a critical requirement for corporate-owned, personally enabled (COPE) devices, as IT can now install non-removable MDM profiles. Read more

VDC met with Samsung at Mobile World Congress this week in Barcelona to discuss the company’s take on enterprise mobility as it announced the launch of the much-anticipated Galaxy S5. The smartphone, with its IP-67 rating for dust and water resistance is the second in Samsung’s lineup for a more ruggedized consumer device after the S4 Active. The latest product in the Galaxy family is leading the trend towards more durable, enterprise-oriented smartphones that continue to blur the line between consumer and enterprise devices that will only turn up the heat further on ruggedized OEMs, who are facing increased competition from their consumer-grade counterparts. Read more

FeedHenry recently released a whitepaper in collaboration with VDC, examining the use of mobile apps in the transportation sector. The findings underscore not only a trend in using mobile solutions to reduce operational costs and improve worker productivity, but also highlight the role they play in improved customer engagement and brand loyalty. Mobility is nothing new to this industry sector. However, the potential for innovation and transformation that can be gained from coupling smart device features with real-time transportation information cannot be ignored.  Read more

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology is poised to revolutionize consumer in-store experience in 2014, further augmenting already existing mobile retail applications. VDC research from last year revealed that 23% of retail organizations had rolled out mobile applications to supplement their current in-store services, and that an additional 42% planned to deploy mobile applications in 2014. BLE technology, like that of Apple’s iBeacon, strives to address this gap with increased location and engagement services by allowing devices to communicate directly with one another. Read more

The National Retail Federation hosted its annual exposition in mid January at the Javits Convention Center in New York City. The two-day event featured 550 retail solution providers and nearly 30,000 attendees, a record for the event. VDC’s Mobility Analysts David Krebs and Kathryn Nassberg took the opportunity meet and speak with a variety of retail technology solution providers and retailers at the expo and observe the emerging mobility trends firsthand. Read more