Are There Still Differentiators in Managed Mobility?

Kathryn Weldon

Summary Bullets:

• Current Analysis was recently briefed by seven mobile operators on their latest managed mobility services.
•  While their portfolios have many elements in common, there remain a few key differentiators.

Every time Current Analysis completes its updates on the global managed mobility services market, there are a number of service elements or sound bites with which to position portfolios that sound increasingly similar. For example, all operators now have several platform options for mobile device management, and most are also leveraging the mobile application management and enterprise app store functionality (and increasingly the app-wrapping or other form of containerization) of their platform partners. Most operators also still offer TEM; a few have MEAP platforms offered as a service while others offer sets of pre-built mobile apps; yet others will do end-to-end mobile application development. Mobile security also has some variation, as some operators view their MDM services as synonymous with their mobile security offerings while others offer a continuum of add-on security capabilities and software partner add-ons or do a lot of custom mobile security engagements. As for positioning, there remains a common view of the near future where, at least as an option, all managed mobility elements are multi-carrier, are offered from the operator’s cloud, and have been integrated into the same service, with a common UI and with all elements viewable and manageable from the same portal; there is also sharing of all data from each service in a shared database to be able to do more analytics and even real-time analysis of usage. Many operators have done some of this kind of integration or plan to do so.