CA World 2013: CA enters MDM space with SAP partnership

CA Technologies has burst its way into the mobile device management (MDM) space by licensing SAP's Afaria technology and teasing users with the promise of more to come in this area later this year.

The company claimed its entry in the space would "make BYOD easy." As well as keeping users happy through increased device options, the new MDM capabilities will ensure finance can more easily control communications costs while also enabling IT to keep tabs of usage and security through easy-to-use, real-time analytics.

"Almost 70 per cent of IT patents being filed today are related to mobile somehow. BYOD is one of the most significant shifts in the economics of client computing since PCs invaded and took over from typewriters. This is something that CA Technologies, with our focus on securing and managing your IT assets whatever, wherever they might be is a really big focus for us," Peter Griffiths, vice president and group executive, of CA Technologies' Enterprise Solutions and Technology Group, said during his keynote at the company's CA World conference in Las Vegas this week.

"CA's mobility solutions deliver mobile device management, mobile application management and we're working to bring mobile content management. This enables you to mobilise your business with speed and control and ensure all of your devices glasses, mobiles and almost anything that's going to be networked in the future are secure from the device, to the application to the content wherever it may be.

"CA MDM improves productivity with simple registration of your device with a powerful app store. It helps automate IT management. We can keep track with real-time insight into the status of the mobile devices we're registering and onboarding."

The company used the conference as an opportunity to highlight the impending mobile explosion and detail how it thinks it can partner with customers to help take advantage of mobility rather than be left behind.

More than 40 per cent of emails are now opened on mobile devices, while, by 2014, more people will use mobiles to access the web than those opting to use PCs, according to the company.

"The good news is parts of this movie have played before. People have had applications on their PCs/mini computers and CA has a long history of managing these environments," said

Ram Varadarajan

"We have the DNA to manage the app and device explosion of today. That gives us an unfair advantage in the marketplace to provides solutions that are readily usable by our customers."

The licensing deal will lay the foundation for CA offerings focused on mobile application, content and service management. It confirmed that new products in these areas will arrive later this year, but didn't go into further detail.

Its just-announced acquisition of Layer 7 Technologies will also help companies with their mobility strategies through enhanced API management and security.