EMM Market Growth to Slow Through 2019

Five Barriers for Enterprise Mobility

Datamation reported on a study from VDC Research that looked at enterprise mobility management (EMM), which is one of the main offshoots of mobile device management (MDM). The firm found that consolidation has created a market that is 77 percent controlled by tier-1 vendors. The companies VDC places in this category are VMware’s AirWatch, BlackBerry, Citrix, Good Technology, IBM, MobileIron and SAP. The tier- 2 vendors include Globo, LANDesk/Wavelink, Microsoft and SOTI.

The overall EMM market is not going well, however. IDC last month said that the mobile management sector will decelerate between now 2019. The firm says that EMM had a growth rate of 27 percent in 2014, but predicts that the increase in 2019 will be less than 10 percent. The value of the market will be $2.9 billion that year, the study said.

The confusion to outsiders between EMM and MDM is acknowledged by those in the know. Last month, Mobile Device Management’s Solutions Review posted a story about Gartner’s Magic Quadrant on EMM. It explained the change in emphasis from MDM to EMM and even managed to sneak in a couple of other acronyms:

It has been just over a year since their last EMM Magic Quadrant release and the Enterprise Mobility market has evolved and grown quite a bit. So how does this year’s report reflect that evolution? Let’s take a look. Last year, and rightfully so, Gartner shifted away from Mobile Device Management (MDM) and began focusing on EMM which reflected the growth and sophistication of mobility within the enterprise. They stated the MDM was now one of three pillars need to truly secure and manage mobility within the enterprise. The other two pillars being Mobile Application Management (MAM) and Mobile Content Management (MCM).

The fluidity of definitions is difficult to deal with. It is necessary, however, simply because the security and management challenges and the specific tools to handle them change frequently. Consolidating these tools on common platforms is a good idea, though it makes the category a bit difficult to follow. At this point, it seems that MDM is out of style, and that EMM showed growth, but is now struggling a bit.

Carl Weinschenk covers telecom for IT Business Edge. He writes about wireless technology, disaster recovery/business continuity, cellular services, the Internet of Things, machine-to-machine communications and other emerging technologies and platforms. He also covers net neutrality and related regulatory issues. Weinschenk has written about the phone companies, cable operators and related companies for decades and is senior editor of Broadband Technology Report. He can be reached at cweinsch@optonline.net and via twitter at @DailyMusicBrk.