"Just this week, systems management vendor CA released its first iteration of a mobile device management solution, called simply CA Mobile Device Management (MDM). In its current state, CA’s solution supports just BlackBerry, but in the near future, support for Symbian and Windows Mobile operating systems will be added...
Recent research from IDC estimated that the mobile device management market is poised to grow from $205.7 million in 2006 to $345 million by 2011...
The overall goal of CA’s MDM is to take a good chunk of the management onus away from administrators and pass it on to the users themselves with the self-service portal, where users can activate devices. Administrators still retain a level of control over exactly what features and functions users can tinker with — like data wiping, locking and unlocking devices, and resetting passwords...
Ptak said that while jumping on the device management bandwagon is good for big vendors like CA, Microsoft and HP, it may not bode well for smaller vendors. The fact that the major players are jockeying for mobile device management shows that devices are being recognized, however, and that is a trend Ptak believes will continue.
'They’d be really foolish not to support device management,' he said. 'You need robust mobile device management to go along with network and systems management.'"
