The Ugly Reality of Mobile Device Management Technologies

These days I spent a lot of time talking to KidoZen customers about their

enterprise mobile initiatives. During those conversations, I frequently get asked my opinions about the mobile device management (MDM) space and

its relationship to modern enterprise mobile platforms such as KidoZen. Almost unequivocally, you can sense the levels of confusion, frustration and

disappointment that customers express when comes to MDM technologies.

From my standpoint, I don’t find those reactions surprising anymore if you consider that we are talking about an overhyped space that have seen its

best days passed without delivering on the promise of becoming the keystone of the enterprise mobility movement.

Last night I briefly summarized some of my thoughts about the MDM space

that I hope can provide an additional perspective to organizations evaluating these type of technologies.

MDM is Just Not Enough

Let’s face it, managing connected devices is just a necessary capability of

enterprise mobile solutions but it’s far from providing any foundation for building a solid enterprise mobile infrastructure.

In plain words, MDM NOT ENOUGH.

In addition to managing mobile devices, organizations need to effectively implement the necessary infrastructure and processes to manage specific

mobile applications, business data, develop, test and distribute applications and many other aspects of a complete enterprise mobile strategy.

Nobody Likes Doing MDM

The fact that most organizations clearly understand MDM technologies are

necessary doesn’t prevent them from hating the technology. Setting up security policies for smartphone and tablets is not sexy and it doesn’t deliver

any tangible business value by itself. If you factor in the fact that most MDM

stacks are ridiculously complex and require fairly sophisticated infrastructures, dedicated management and operations staff and expensive

professional services you will clearly see why most enterprises see these type of solutions as a “necessary evil” in their enterprise mobile

infrastructure.

The Golden Days of MDM are Behind Us

As a technology trend, MDM has passed its best days. The strong entrance of companies like Citrix, Microsoft and VMWare in the MDM market and the

large funds ($200M series A) raised by market leaders like AirWatch are a clear sign that we are passed the hyper growth curve of the MDM space.

From now on, we should expect additional consolidation in the market that will also cause a lot of the existing MDM vendors to reinvent themselves or

face the inevitable consequence of going out of business or becoming irrelevant.

Too Crowded, Not Enough Differentiator

Like any other overhyped technology trend, the MDM space is crowded with

a large number of technology vendors with similar value propositions. These level of noise in the market, makes it really hard for customers to distinguish

the unique MDM vendors from the mediocre ones and, let’s be honest, THERE IS A LOT OF MEDIOCRE TECHNOLOGY IN THE MDM SPACE.

The Big Guys are Making MDM a Feature not a Product

With the entrance of some of the leaders in the system management space

such as VMWare, Citrix or Microsoft, the MDM ecosystem is witnessing a transformation on which the capability of managing mobile devices is being

delivered as part of bigger IT management suites. While is too soon to determine if this trend will prevail in the long run, we have to admit that,

conceptually at least, it might help to bring more value to customers and it can completely commoditize the MDM space.

At the End, MDM is an Enabler not an End Solution

Even if you disagree on the previous points I might be able to convince you

about this one: as an organization, it’s key to realize that MDM is, in the best case, just an enabler of security and management capabilities in an

enterprise mobile infrastructure and nothing else. Your goal as an enterprise should never be to effective manage smartphones or tablets but to deliver

great enterprise mobile solutions to employees, partners and customers.

Sometimes MDM solutions can help to facilitate that goal or, sadly, sometimes they just become a roadblock.