Beyond MDM: Making Mobile Mainstream in the Enterprise

One of the things that impressed me at the Gartner Symposium and Interop New York in the past few weeks, is just how mainstream mobility has become in the enterprise. Smartphones, starting with the BlackBerry, have been parts of businesses for many years, but what is changing is that the emphasis is moving from managing the devices and just delivering mail, contacts, and calendar information, towards actually presenting and developing enterprise applications on such devices.

Managing Data and Applications
According to John Marshall, general manager and co-founder of AirWatch (now part of VMware), the big change he's seen in the past year is that companies are now asking for content, not just apps, to be deployed on mobile devices. He said the IT departments he talks to want to focus on content management and collaboration. He said one difference with AirWatch, compared with many of its competitors, is that AirWatch doesn't care where you store you content, whether on a traditional file service or the cloud. "We want to get the right content to the right person by the best communication method," Marshall said.

"It's about the data," Good CEO Christy Wyatt said, stressing her company's security features. She is a big fan of keeping data within a secure container but extending that container with more applications, perhaps deployed over a "hybrid cloud." She said she has seen a trend of IT departments moving beyond straight mobile device management (MDM) toward enterprise mobility management (EMM), and in many cases, needing to deploy applications and data securely across multiple platforms.

Phil Redman, vice president of mobile solutions and strategy for Citrix, talked about how the firm offers a variety of solutions, including a new WorxMail app designed to enable a quick "triage" to find the important messages, as well as collaboration features. And for sharing files, he said the company's ShareFile offers more granular policies for managing data than general services such as Box, Microsoft OneDrive, or Google Drive.

Ojas Rege, vice president for strategy at MobileIron, agreed that applications and secure data have become increasingly important over the past year with many large enterprises now focused not just on email, but on containers for applications and data. To that end, he said, the company now offers a "per-app VPN" to provide more security. Going forward, he said, he thinks that in 2015, identity will become a much bigger concern for delivering what Mobile Iron calls "contextual trust."

BlackBerry, which has been repositioning its enterprise offerings as controlling content and applications across all the mobile platforms (supporting BlackBerry, iOS, and Android now, with Windows Phone support due shortly), was focusing on managed endpoint. Jeff Holleran, Sr. Director of Enterprise Product Strategy for BlackBerry, noted how the company has long secured enterprise data and talked about the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) Network Operations Center (NOC), which he said offers more security than an in-bound proxy in the DMZ, which is how most other solutions work.

But he also talked about the importance of containers, noting how on Android, BES now offers a full container with sync in the background, features such as DocsToGo, and a simple but secure way of wrapping third-party applications. In particular, he said, the company was gaining traction in security-conscious and regulated industries and mentioned the BBM Protected instant messaging app as getting a lot of attention.

Merging Management and Managing File Collaboration
One new thing I noted at the show was the concept that Macs and PCs will eventually be managed the way that mobile devices are managed. Many of the traditional MDM vendors now support managing Macs and PCs running Windows 8.1, and companies known for managing PCs are now introducing their own enterprise mobility solutions, such as Microsoft with InTune, and LANDesk, which has a version due out shortly with features such as easy app wrapping. (Indeed, Microsoft said today that it will be including MDM features with its commercial Office 365 offerings.)

But the fields have not yet merged. For instance, while AirWatch's Marshall agreed that in the long run, laptops and other devices will eventually be managed by the same suite, and noted his company's support for managing Macs and current Windows devices, he said IT managers will likely still need older tools such as Microsoft System Center to do more complex management and control updates on most PCs. MobileIron's Rege noted how his firm's product is now being integrated with System Center. (It looked to me like there's still a long way to go before enterprise IT departments have a single management tool for all devices, but it's good to see some progress happening here).

I also noticed more of an emphasis on sharing documents securely this year, both with cloud-centric products such as Box and Microsoft OneDrive, and those designed for more hybrid environments, with some data remaining in corporate data centers, such as Accellion Kiteworks Citrix ShareFile, EMC Syncplicity, and WatchDox.

I also noticed many more programs aimed at helping you move applications to the cloud and really use them. Kony had an interesting modeler that is designed to let typical users design the applications they want through a visual development tool, yet still supports iOS and Android. Kony has MDM products designed for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and Windows, but the focus seems to be on creating HTML5 and hybrid applications using a single code base. K2 seems to have a similar approach with its Blackpearl products, again focused on forms-based applications. I was particularly intrigued by its approach to SharePoint apps. And there are dozens of other middleware products designed to help you do similar things.

Mobile is moving from an afterthought or an add-on to the traditional IT environment to taking center stage along with traditional PCs. It's a generational shift, and it seems like every enterprise vendor wants to play a part.