So what you all might not know about me is that back in the day, I was a pretty big fan of heavy metal. I'll even admit to the fact that I had a mullet. Hey, it was the 80s! Thankfully, there are no pictures (that I am aware of) of me with said mullet. At any rate, in 1989, there was this huge rock concert called the Moscow Music Peace Festival that included Ozzy Osbourne. For a long time he started his shows off by saying "Let the madness...begin." Check out this YouTube video (around 2:15) if you don't believe me. So how the heck does this have ANYTHING to do with enterprise mobility????
So OK, enough "madness." I'm talking about the fact that there was a very important announcement today in the world of enterprise mobility. Tangoe Wireless, a leading wireless expense management company acquired Internoded, a leading mobile device management company. I had the privilege to hear about this announcement a few weeks back, but let me tell you why this matters to the world of enterprise mobility now.
Let me net it out for you: "One throat to choke." End-user organizations are continuing to deploy mobility solutions. That's no secret. The challenge is that more devices, more applications and more users creates MORE havoc for the IT/Telecom departments that have to manage the actual deployments. This - in many respects - is a symptom of the consumerization of enterprise mobility. This is not a bad thing, per se, but it does require organizations to go from being reactive to proactive.
What I mean by that is that there has never been a question in my mind that a holistic mobility strategy requires end-user organizations to have a strategy for the entire life-cycle of mobility management. This goes from procurement to device management, to application management, to service management, as well as security, end-user support and expense management. What we saw today happen with Tangoe and Internoded is just the beginning. They are pioneers in terms of the fact that they recognize that end-user organizations will ultimately want and NEED "one throat to choke". The combined company provides organizations a way to manage their mobility inititiatives in a more consolidated fashion. Does this new combined entity serve everything a company needs? No. However, Tangoe does have the foresight to recognize the future of what organizations will need. An outsourced managed service.
So until then, other organizations in enterprise mobilty management will strugle to figure out who to partner with or whom they should look at M&A with. Hence...where I say "let the madness...begin." Best of breed players will need to develop strategic partnerships and/or merge with other companies to be able to provide their customers a holistic managed mobility service.
This is where the fun begins. The market for enterprise mobility management is set to explode...and consolidate. The great part is that I get to share my thoughts with you about it...
PS: I still like Ozzy ;-)
