IDC forecasts cloud-based security boost for mobile devices

The Western European enterprise mobility management and security market set for rapid growth as convergence with cloud accelerates.

So claims research published by analyst firm IDC, which predicts the enterprise mobility management and security market in the region will reach $763 million (468 million) in 2015 and grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30 per cent over the next five years.

Customers... are turning to the cloud, both public and private, as an alternative to be up and running in hours as opposed to days.

Nicholas McQuire, research director for IDC Mobile Enterprise Strategies arm in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), told IT Pro's sister site Cloud Pro this trend towards more software-as-a-service (SaaS) based delivery was agnostic of enterprise sector, class or size.

"Twelve months ago, enterprises were taking relative siloed approaches to managing their mobile devices and security," he said. "Now we're seeing the ability to access corporate data and application in and outside of a company's proprietary networks and over the public internet, we see them looking for more holistic solutions to help more broadly with all aspect of mobile risk management."

Enterprises increasingly have to manage not only the mobile devices themselves, he said, but also the range of network activity they enable for employees to access company information or for customers, in business-to-consumer (B2C) applications to access customer-facing services.

Security and device management are more generally intertwined as a result, McQuire explained. So enterprises are increasingly looking for solutions that can manage remote wipe and lock, device tracking, application access and security and policy management capabilities, among others.

"Customers rationalising mobility requirements today often don't have the time, resource, or business case to pilot, evaluate, install, and configure capex based on-premise solutions, so they are turning to the cloud, both public and private, as an alternative to be up and running in hours as opposed to days," he added.

The market was evolving to meet growing demand with a flavour of hybrid on-premise, hosted and outsourced models, according to McQuire.

"Some enterprises may need to integrate with Active Directory and existing VPN [virtual private network] services or PKI [public key infrastructures], for example so may want just want mobile management SaaS, or their mobile infrastructure managed as a service behind their firewall or hosted in a third-party data centre," he said.

The required complexity, speed of mobile development and scalability required to manage expanding mobile device estates "lends itself very nicely to cloud and SaaS-based solutions," he added.

And the rapid spread of mobile adoption throughout enterprises meant enterprises could choose from a number of business cases, around productivity or customer service for instance, to fund a move to SaaS-based mobile device management over the next few years.