Mobile or non-mobile?

The Experton Group believes that the topic of mobile enterprise will continue to change significantly in 2013 and 2014.

"Mobile Enterprise will become much more business-oriented in the future. In the course of a complete mobile enterprise strategy, managed services will also become more important, both for mobile device management and for the workplace as a whole.

Many companies will find that in-house operation incurs higher costs than using a service provider, the necessary human resources are difficult to recruit or train, and in particular the added value of in-house operation compared to a managed service is hard to prove.

Users who choose to go in-house will increasingly opt for cloud solutions for mobile device management and data storage."

Mobile computing is treacherous because it is indifferent: An Apple iPad comes with almost no description and yet can be put into operation without any problems in a few minutes - even the battery is already charged.

A few minutes later, you can use Apple TV to broadcast your own pictures, videos and presentations on the screen via the projector.

It couldn't be simpler. But: Buying an iPad in Germany, registering it with Apple, giving it to a traveled employee from Brazil for professional use as an incentive - without the employee first receiving an email (based on the registration) that prevents automatic copying of business data and addresses into the Apple Cloud - that and much more is nearly impossible!

As playful as the use of the new mobile end devices may be, their use in the professional environment is obviously something else. According to the analysts at Experton, trends such as consumerization, client virtualization, bring-your-own-device, and the increasing mobility of employees have massively changed the role of client IT.

Two to three years ago, the client still played a rather subordinate role, usually highly standardized and rated as non-strategic. In the meantime, IT departments have addressed the new challenges, service providers offer good managed services for mobile device management and the workplace as a whole, and the software solutions available on the market for mobile device management are at least partially mature.

Product offerings and services meet their customers' requirements well, Experton Group found in its independent market study "Mobile Enterprise Vendor Benchmark 2013". For this study, the products and services of numerous mobile enterprise vendors were examined, evaluated and compared with each other.

The market for mobile device management software is still clearly uneven. Of the fifteen providers of special solutions for smartphones and tablets active on the German market, Experton included five in the leader quadrant.

The best-rated provider in the mobile device management software benchmark is MobileIron, followed at some distance by SAP. SAP has improved significantly over the past twelve months, according to the analysts at Experton.

Both the strategic direction of the product and the embedding in a mobile strategy have positively influenced the development focus and improved the solution.