How EMM Tools are Evolving With the Market

More and more businesses in the enterprise have started to put mobility management at the top of their priority list, given the popularity of mobile devices among the workforce. So let’s take a look at the Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) market and how the tools in this space are changing along with it.

The market itself is flooded with mergers and acquisitions that keep it shifting, which means the features organizations are hoping to find in EMM tools also change regularly. The role EMM plays in this space has grown since emerging years ago when Mobile Device Management (MDM) was the only option. Back then, companies were focused on implementing technology that focused on asset management and device kill switches, according to TechTarget. However, as mobile devices gained momentum and popularity, Bring Your Own Device policies meant businesses needed to take action quickly and deploy what they already had available in their enterprise toolkits.

Now that the EMM market has ballooned and there aren’t as many MDM tools available, some predict that vendors like IBM and VMWare will begin to focus more on the functionality and productivity boost their EMM suites provide, instead of honing in on management.

And some, such as SAP, which acquired Sybase, refocused on enterprise suites that have a larger ROI and include big data and analytics. While Microsoft, one of the larger vendors in the market, added basic EMM features into its PC and server management tools. And some major players in the cloud space are now including basic mobility management to their solutions. This indicates that many are looking to have their infrastructure providers add EMM features to their tools so they don’t have to purchase a separate product for mobility management. This is a cause for concern for EMM vendors.

“There will be room for some niche players to remain, but overall, the EMM market will continue to shrink,” according to TechTarget.

Security has always been a benefit of MDM and EMM, but the most forward-thinking tools on the market today have placed focus on protecting against new threats to keep organizations from experiencing data breaches as opposed to just keeping devices themselves safe.

And operating system providers have attempted to meet that need by adding more capabilities, like Google Android did with Android for Work, which in many cases removes the need for a stand-alone EMM suite.

A major trend that picked up steam last year and will continue to gain popularity is moving from on-prem EMM solutions to cloud-based-as-a-service offerings. Many of the leaders in the EMM market have made this change, and TechTarget reported that about 80 to 90 percent of new implementations will be in the cloud and the remaining are expected to transition over the next few years. This shift in the market could mean that the cost for basic EMM tools will go down.

Stay with us for updates on the continued changes that are expected in this space.