Summary Bullets:
- IoT is a strong focus for all ITSPs, but there are multiple organizational strategies used to accommodate the growth opportunity without diluting the ‘cash cow’ of traditional enterprise mobility.
- Mobile app development is evolving to better meet the needs of customers with faster development tools, use of open source resources, and new development and delivery options.
Current Analysis provides biannual update reports on the mobility services of key IT service providers such as Accenture, IBM, T-Systems, BT Global Services, HPE and CSC. Our most recent updates show some key trends.
As IoT grows in importance (but remains significantly lower in revenue than traditional enterprise mobility services), IT service providers are utilizing different strategies to balance the growth opportunity in IoT while maintaining the focus on the currently larger market of developing apps, providing advisory services, and offering EMM and security solutions. Some examples follow:
- Accenture Mobility combines enterprise mobility and IoT within the same group, providing consulting, applications, managed services, connected devices and embedded software, and connected products, platforms and services.
- CSC has taken mobility out of its Emerging Business Group; it is now part of Global Business Services, along with big data, cybersecurity, social and cloud services. IoT is shared by the big data and mobility practices. These shifts reflect CSC’s new priorities, as many more sales and delivery resources can now be allocated to these newer strategic, high-growth services.
- IBM has separated IoT from enterprise mobility; IoT has its own dedicated BU, fortified by a $3 billion investment over four years and a team of more than 2,000 consultants, researchers and developers.
Mobile application development is a rapidly evolving and increasingly lucrative area for IT service providers; new capabilities and partnerships were introduced over the last six months in this area, including the following:
- IBM added RMAD, for rapid development and to empower non-developers to contribute in the app ideation, prototype and build process; API Connect, a simplified API lifecycle solution to create, run, manage and secure APIs and microservices; and enhanced contextual and cognitive mobile services, adding personality, concept insights, tradeoff analytics and natural language analysis to enrich applications.
- HP Enterprise and Microsoft announced a global partnership in November 2015, which includes Cloud Productivity & Mobility Solution Offerings, including business applications for Windows 10.
- Accenture opened its Liquid Application Studio in Redwood City, CA, to help businesses accelerate application development by using contemporary architectures, reusable components, automation tools and leading software development methods.
The new toolsets, services and partnerships provide differentiation for these service providers in the increasingly competitive area of mobile application development. For vendors such as IBM, they leverage unique capabilities such as cognitive analytics; meanwhile for HP, the relationship with Microsoft expands HPE’s potential customer base, as it can now offer businesses a portfolio of integrated services and solutions on top of Microsoft product offerings. For Accenture, Liquid Application development is positioned as a fundamentally new way to build software that is faster and more flexible. It features a shift to a use of smaller components that can be rapidly assembled.
Several IT service providers are also adding new security capabilities to their mobility portfolios. T-Systems, for example, launched a new Trusted Security business unit which leverages MobileIron EMM as a core building block but adds new elements from partners Zimperium (with real-time threat detection) and Wandera (for mobile encryption). The new BU has more than 1,000 dedicated security employees and offers endpoint security, identity management and cyber defense management, with offerings from consulting up to system integration.
These new capabilities show the importance of the continuous evolution of mobility portfolios for differentiation, in alignment with the concerns of enterprise customers looking to leverage mobility for increasingly sophisticated use cases.
IT Connection 