Enterprise Mobility Summit 2014: Complete MDM solutions 'will not be available from any single vendor' says BlueCat CTO

'There's something fundamentally wrong with the market definition' says Wertkin

The market definition of mobile device management (MDM) is "fundamentally wrong", and any claims vendors make to offer end-to-end solutions are ultimately baseless. That's according to the chief technology officer of infrastructure firm BlueCat.

Speaking at Computing's Enterprise Mobility Summit 2014 in London, Andrew Wertkin explained his belief that the beginnings of the MDM industry were rooted in hurried technical decisions based on past habits.

"I don't like to simplify, but I feel like the first action from an MDM perspective was 'BlackBerry's going down, other stuff's going in, we in IT need a similar experience as we had managing BlackBerry', and that basically became MDM.

"I've been reading about all the vendors and where they are, and for many their value schtick starts 'Whatever we did before didn't work, the real solution is...'.

"These are all quotes from what I read last week: 'manage the data not the devices', 'manage the users not the devices', 'manage the applications, not the devices', 'reduce the number of devices with CYOD' – you name it.

"They are also all promising 'next gen' solutions," said Wertkin. "Something's wrong when every vendor in the market says 'The way we used to do it isn't right, and we've got a new strategy'.

"Small vendors do one or two of these [MDM services]," but nobody does end to end, he said. "I think that shows that there's something fundamentally wrong with the market definition of MDM. I think it's changed, because I think the requirements are changing."

Wertkin said MDM vendors need to start looking at "wielding technology in the cloud" in order to differentiate themselves from competitors, while treating mobile and cloud as "two ends of the same thing".

"Complete solutions will not be available from any single vendor, I guarantee it," said Wertkin.