Gartner Magic Quadrant for Mobile Device Management (MDM)

Take a glance at the just released 2013 Gartner, Inc. (IT) Magic Quadrant report for Mobile Device Management (MDM), and you'll recognize some familiar vendors, including AirWatch, MobileIron, BoxTone, and Tangoe. The information technology (IT) research firm said in its report that MDM will continue to grow at a fast rate, and that MDM vendors must step up their game with strong MDM offerings that go above and beyond just policy to satisfy the growing needs for enterprise mobile management (EMM). Which vendors did Gartner place into its top right Leaders quadrant? We'll reveal the answer, along with other  vendors included in the report.

First, some background on the market. Gartner again has left out the multitenant remote monitoring and management platforms (RMM) used by managed service providers (MSPs) that also support MDM such as Level Platforms, N-able [just acquired by SolarWinds (SWI], Kaseya, LabTech and Continuum, among others. Also missing: MDM specialist Amtel. Gartner's focus has remained on the enterprise. Yet Gartner's insights into the MDM space are valuable to everyone who serves that space. The analyst firm said that every MDM product in the market falls under one of the following main categories: software management, network service management, hardware management, or security management.

MDM products will focus on two major trends in 2013 and beyond: security and mobile enablement. Security trends will include application-based VPN; data containerization; and network access control (NAC), while mobile enablement will focus on enterprise file synchronization and sharing (EFSS); app catalog; application provisioning and support; and application virtualization.

Drumroll Please: Gartner's Magic Quadrant for MDM

The firm's analysts evaluate vendors on the completeness of vision, which reviews a vendor's ability to "articulate logical statements about current and future market direction, innovation, customer needs, and competitive forces, as well as how they map to the Gartner position."

Leaders

According to Gartner, "Leaders demonstrate balanced progress, effort and clout in all execution and vision categories and are the first to envision, develop and launch new MDM features, partnerships and strategies."

AirWatch, MobileIron, Citrix (CTXS), SAP (ATR), Good Technology and Fiberlink placed in the Leaders Quadrant for 2013.

Challengers

Vendors in the Challengers category "address the typical baseline needs for MDM, with competitive visibility that is strong enough to demand attention in RFPs, but may not show up as often, nor win as many clients as leaders."

Gartner did not name any vendors in its Challengers quadrant.

Niche Players

Vendors recognized in this quadrant "meet the typical needs of buyers, and fare well when given a chance to compete in a product evaluation, but are usually smaller, and many buyers may be unaware of their services."

McAfee, Blackberry (BBRY), Tangoe, LANDesk, Sophos, Trend Micro, Absolute Software and Kaspersky Lab fit Gartner's description and were positioned into this bottom left quadrant.

Visionaries

MDM vendors placed into this quadrant "demonstrate long-term strategies for MDM that point to the product and service approaches that will be most competitive in the future."

BoxTone, SOTI, Symantec (SYMC) and IBM (IBM) placed in this category.

Gartner's forecast for MDM

Gartner said it's fairly challenging for vendors to provide a one size fits all solution, due to the lack of standardization in mobility. Often, administrators are forced to combine point solutions to enable a mobile solution. This typically leads to a poor user experience.

As MDM adoption continues, more emphasis will be on incorporating an EMM and enablement solutions, instead of just a policy management. MDM has envolved to enterprise mobility management and many vendors will be shifting focus to "enabling mobile applications and data on the device, as well as for ensuring the security of that data." Gartner said, however, that many vendors are still working on products in that area.