MDM Vendors Look to Mobile Apps/Security Management for Differentiation

K. Weldon

Summary Bullets:

• Mobile application management (MAM) became the ‘new’ buzzword in enterprise mobility in 2011/2012 as enterprises and service providers shift their focus from mobile device management (now somewhat commoditized) to mobile app development, delivery, and security.  A large set of relatively small vendors (many of whose names start with ‘App’) is selling solutions for app development, app and content management, and app security.  However, the market is now split into ‘pure-play’ MAM vendors (with a number of sub-categories and niches) and MDM vendors that have been adding some of these capabilities to enrich their core offerings.
• From the channel perspective, mobile operators and IT service providers have taken note of this trend and are trying to make sense of yet another set of potential partners.  Service providers can resell MAM solutions, but they could also potentially strike more meaningful relationships with MAM vendors as platform providers for managed mobility services.  Or, they can stay with their core MDM partners and hope they are up to the task of adding MAM functionality.

MAM vendors include companies that may provide platforms for mobile app development but also focus on app delivery, ongoing management, and security.  They often help customers set up role/policy-based enterprise app stores and many feature app-wrapping technology that secures each individual app rather than the device.  Examples include AppCentral, AppBlade, App47, Appcelerator, Apperian, and Partnerpedia.  Worklight (acquired by IBM in 2012) provides “open standards-based app development with tools and a console for easy deployment and maintenance of mobile apps, as well as enterprise integration to enable secure device/server connectivity and secure device storage.”  Mocana and Nukona (the latter acquired by Symantec in 2012) focus more on the security side, providing ‘app-wrapping’ technology and enabling data access/authentication, usage controls, and protection policies such as per app file encryption and copy-and-paste prevention.