Let’s remember: when laptops appeared end of last century, companies immediately understood the benefits they could make from mobility. Thus, they massively got equipped with those new devices. Then, naturally, the problematic of the remote management was asked. Consequently, sometime later (and probably after some incidents…), the security of those devices was asked.
To summarize: a technological breakthrough brought by new devices appeared, leading to a need of management and finally security solutions.
Aren’t we again living with the advent of smartphones and tablets? Undeniably, but even more massively with the number of devices they represent. This critical mass brought emerging management solutions called MDM (Mobile Device Management) followed by EMM (Enterprise Mobile Management). It also clearly supported the strong growth this new market was experiencing. Now it has reached its maturity, this market needs to address its expansion and its actors are going to turn to… security. Indeed, if the management sector is mature, we’re at the early days of the mobile security one. Different players understood it pretty well and, therefore, partnership announcements are multiplying.
For now, those connections are made through technological partnerships, implying simple integrations allowing solutions to communicate between themselves. Next step will be, without a doubt, a fusion between the two of them to become only one solution.
Unlike management, the security market doesn’t outstand one worldwide leader as we used to know with antimalware (especially as they have failed to take the mobility turn). It is mainly made of startups whereas the management sector involves players such as VMware, IBM, Microsoft,… (Airwatch, Zenprise, Fiberlinks, … startups that were carrying this market have been all bought by those actors).
Then, this history logical consequence will be a succession of acquisitions of those startups by worldwide players. That way, unified solutions will appear to take care of all the problematics linked to mobile devices management. However, this unification will have to integrate specificities of those two worlds, keeping in mind that mobility administrators are not security administrators.
At a short term, this unification will be carried on by security needs that will become more and more pressuring. When it will have drained all of its growth potential, a new turn over will be imposed, once again carried out by new devices: connected objects. Those new devices will have to be managed and secured, but this time, for all that anticipations will be made on time, solutions will be ready. See, it’s possible to learn from history…