Dreams of Spain: Predictions for MWC 2013

Kathryn Weldon

Summary Bullets:

• Last year, the major enterprise mobility themes at MWC could be divided into two broad categories: how to cope (and even thrive) in a BYOD world and how to make money out of M2M devices and services.
• It is no real surprise, but to a great extent, these are still going to be key themes at this year’s show.  How have the enterprise mobility and M2M ecosystems evolved in the interim?

MWC is coming soon and the mobile ecosystem once again gets to show off its shiny new wares.  Aside from mobile devices, infrastructure enhancements, and new apps, even the enterprise mobility vendors and service providers get to show off new software capabilities and services.  These are generally focused on enabling companies to leverage the power of mobility more productively (and with less angst).  While last year’s show focused on the tablet revolution, BYOD, and the rise of MDM, vendors are now going to the next step, offering a broader ‘enterprise mobility management’ portfolio instead, which may encompass MDM, MAM, mobile security, identity management, virtualization, containerization, dual persona solutions, enterprise app stores, mobile content management, application enablement and delivery, and app-level security.  They are making these options available via the cloud or on-premises to offer diverse business models.  As no vendor wants to remain only a niche player, many are offering features beyond their original set of capabilities, either by partnering, acquiring, or developing their own solutions.  MWC is going to include a lot of portfolio repositioning by vendors and their carrier and IT service provider channel partners to encompass all of these diverse capabilities.  The questions remain:  Should they all try to offer the same elements (and if so, where will differentiation be established)?  Can they all pull it off?