For the fifth consecutive year, IBM has been recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Mobility Management Suites.

We believe Gartner’s annual assessment serves as a trusted guide for IT and security professionals in their pursuit to procure the best enterprise mobility management (EMM) technology on the market, outlining strengths and weaknesses that will aid in their selection of a solution suited for their needs.

IBM MaaS360 has maintained a focus on helping customers of all sizes across all industries enable trusted apps and content on any device, anytime, anywhere. An unrelenting pursuit to execute our vision has solidified our position in the upper right of the quadrant year after year.

Persistent effort to securely evolve our EMM technology to keep up with rapid changes in mobility has been paramount in this undertaking. Our newly advanced app catalogs and containment solutions have simplified and secured the seemingly complex ways in which devices are used to connect, create, communicate and collaborate for work.

Answering to a Contemporary Mobile App Strategy

As mobile apps have advanced, the business use cases involving smartphones and tablets have multiplied, making it easier for workers to perform their jobs the way they want to while yielding substantial organizational growth.

In the Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Mobility Management Suites, Gartner stated that “role-specific and mission-critical apps and data are increasingly the bulk of what is being pushed to users’ mobile devices. As this trend matures, the need for application-level controls and reporting, along with the ability to deliver and consume a growing number of content types, is at the heart of many mobile strategies.”

A founding member of the AppConfig Community, MaaS360 has put a significant focus on sharing best practices with app developers to instill apps with the management functionality and configurability required by modern enterprise IT. With approximately 10 million app distributions and over 100,000 apps managed across all customer app catalogs, MaaS360 makes app distribution an effortless and effective endeavor, ensuring those tailor-made for workplace use find their way to the right devices.

In this year’s report, Gartner divulged that the enterprise app catalogs made available from EMM vendors “range from rudimentary to highly functional, some approaching the usability and features of major commercial app stores such as Apple’s App Store or Google Play.”

With MaaS360’s newly reimagined enterprise app catalogs for iOS and Android devices, users will find the discovery of newly released, bundled and featured enterprise apps an unmistakably familiar process.

Containment: The New Core Enterprise Mobility Management Capability

New this year, Gartner has put an increased focus on a number of distinct containment options enterprises should use to separate work apps and resources from the personal contents on mobile devices, while upholding data loss prevention (DLP).

Gartner has identified three key containment methods, new for 2016, and all are directly addressed by functionality available through the MaaS360 Productivity Suite:

• PIMs: Delivered through its Secure Mobile Mail offering, MaaS360’s recently refreshed PIM has implemented new swipe gestures and shortcuts that make it easier than ever to navigate through email, contacts, calendar and chat to get more accomplished in less time. Separated from the personal apps on the device, the passcode-protected, security-rich container maintains DLP.
• Preconfigured applications: Secure Mobile Browser eliminates headaches for IT by providing control over the end user experience. By defining restricted URLs or types of websites, IT does not need to resort to restricting mobile web surfing but rather ensures the navigation process is controlled and protected.
• Application extensions: Mobile Application Security gives IT the capability to inject enterprise-level security into any apps that are deployed, whether public or private. Single sign-on access can be delivered to secured apps — and restricted to enrolled and compliant devices only. Once in the applications, actions such as cut/copy/paste or data backup can be restricted.

Security: The Missing Method to the EMM Madness

We find EMM to be more than a means to deliver productivity to devices; we also see it as the primary mechanism to secure those devices. If there is a 2017 edition of the Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Mobility Management, we would love to see Gartner highlight the market’s transition to mobile security.

To ensure full protection of any mobile environment, key integrations with security solutions are the new requirement for IT — including SIEM platforms and malware detection and remediation tools — on the way to making EMM more intelligent respective to security threats.

Read the Report

Gartner’s report delves into five core EMM technical capabilities, all of which are covered by MaaS360 today:

• Mobile device management (MDM);
• Mobile application management (MAM);
• Mobile identity (MI);
• Mobile content management (MCM); and
• Containment.

Download your copy of the “2016 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Mobility Management Suites” report to read more.

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