1. The Ugly Reality of Mobile Device
Management Technologies
These days I spent a lot of time talking to KidoZen customers about their
enterprise mobile initiatives. During those conversations, I frequently get
asked my opinions about the mobile device management (MDM) space and
its relationship to modern enterprise mobile platforms such as KidoZen.
Almost unequivocally, you can sense the levels of confusion, frustration and
disappointment that customers express when comes to MDM technologies.
From my standpoint, I don’t find those reactions surprising anymore if you
consider that we are talking about an overhyped space that have seen its
best days passed without delivering on the promise of becoming the
keystone of the enterprise mobility movement.
Last night I briefly summarized some of my thoughts about the MDM space
that I hope can provide an additional perspective to organizations evaluating
these type of technologies.
MDM is Just Not Enough
Let’s face it, managing connected devices is just a necessary capability of
enterprise mobile solutions but it’s far from providing any foundation for
building a solid enterprise mobile infrastructure.
In plain words, MDM NOT ENOUGH.
In addition to managing mobile devices, organizations need to effectively
implement the necessary infrastructure and processes to manage specific
mobile applications, business data, develop, test and distribute applications
and many other aspects of a complete enterprise mobile strategy.
Nobody Likes Doing MDM
The fact that most organizations clearly understand MDM technologies are
necessary doesn’t prevent them from hating the technology. Setting up
security policies for smartphone and tablets is not sexy and it doesn’t deliver

2. any tangible business value by itself. If you factor in the fact that most MDM
stacks are ridiculously complex and require fairly sophisticated
infrastructures, dedicated management and operations staff and expensive
professional services you will clearly see why most enterprises see these
type of solutions as a “necessary evil” in their enterprise mobile
infrastructure.
The Golden Days of MDM are Behind Us
As a technology trend, MDM has passed its best days. The strong entrance
of companies like Citrix, Microsoft and VMWare in the MDM market and the
large funds ($200M series A) raised by market leaders like AirWatch are a
clear sign that we are passed the hyper growth curve of the MDM space.
From now on, we should expect additional consolidation in the market that
will also cause a lot of the existing MDM vendors to reinvent themselves or
face the inevitable consequence of going out of business or becoming
irrelevant.
Too Crowded, Not Enough Differentiator
Like any other overhyped technology trend, the MDM space is crowded with
a large number of technology vendors with similar value propositions. These
level of noise in the market, makes it really hard for customers to distinguish
the unique MDM vendors from the mediocre ones and, let’s be honest,
THERE IS A LOT OF MEDIOCRE TECHNOLOGY IN THE MDM SPACE.
The Big Guys are Making MDM a Feature not a Product
With the entrance of some of the leaders in the system management space
such as VMWare, Citrix or Microsoft, the MDM ecosystem is witnessing a
transformation on which the capability of managing mobile devices is being
delivered as part of bigger IT management suites. While is too soon to
determine if this trend will prevail in the long run, we have to admit that,
conceptually at least, it might help to bring more value to customers and it
can completely commoditize the MDM space.
At the End, MDM is an Enabler not an End Solution
Even if you disagree on the previous points I might be able to convince you
about this one: as an organization, it’s key to realize that MDM is, in the best
case, just an enabler of security and management capabilities in an
enterprise mobile infrastructure and nothing else. Your goal as an enterprise
should never be to effective manage smartphones or tablets but to deliver

3. great enterprise mobile solutions to employees, partners and customers.
Sometimes MDM solutions can help to facilitate that goal or, sadly,
sometimes they just become a roadblock.