About 40 per cent of global businesses have deployed mobile device management in some form
Ingram Micro Mobility last week held its first ever MDM Summit conference to help educate its reseller partners on the opportunities in the $534 million (£317 million) device management market.
The Samsung-sponsored event, held at the Sofitel Hotel at Heathrow airport on May 14, provided the 100-plus attendees the opportunity to listen and talk to some of the UK’s leading MDM service providers, including NQ Mobile, Samsung, BlackBerry, SOTI, Nokia, Amtel and NetMotion Wireless.
Ingram senior manager of Europe for software and services Marios Ktisti (pictured), who was described as the brainchild behind the event, told Mobile News around 40 per cent of all global businesses have now deployed MDM in some capacity, with the global market estimated to be worth around £317 million* today.
That figure is set to rise significantly over the next three years to more than $1.6 billion with the EMEA region alone valued at $452 million.
Leading role
Ktisti said Ingram Micro Mobility is keen to put its stamp on this lucrative market – and be seen as the “provider of choice” to the reseller channel, providing the widest range of choice and support.
“From an Ingram perspective, MDM is a huge focus for us,” said Ktisti. “We want to be the provider of choice regardless of the end customers operator platform, whether they run their devices on BlackBerry, iOS, or Android or on Windows.
“We’re bringing in brands which are leaders in their space, but maybe not hugely familiar with your traditional mobile channel. We are positioned to provide a solution through working with the numerous brands we offer, and a single source for the hardware, software and the service.
“We felt it was the right time to promote this comprehensive portfolio.”
He continued: “MDM has been around for a long time, but many just know it as BlackBerry, which revolutionised it all.
“Ingram is ideally placed. It is a convergent market and the types of resellers that will be interested in MDM solutions is a very broad spectrum. It’s not just your traditional phone dealer that’s evolved over the years, it’s your traditional IT reseller that’s looking to provide MDM for smartphones.
“Resellers who were all just mobile phone dealers suddenly had this new service proposition, but as time moved on, everything has evolved. Their’s and the customer’s knowledge has grown and there is now a demand for other solutions on other phones other than BlackBerry.
Ingram Micro is offering a number of training and service options to help existing resellers widen their current MDM offerings, but also aiding those looking to adopt MDM for the first time.
In addition to training (through dedicated staff and events such as MDM Summit), Ingram is offering resellers seeding devices loaded with the requested MDM software allowing them to test and learn about the product, as well as demonstrate to customers. The distributor also recently began including finance packages to its B2B resellers to help cover the costs (see box out) of M2M packages – as well as hardware, handsets, accessories – over the course of a one, two or three years.
“If someone has been selling BlackBerry for a while, and wants to start selling something like, for example SOTI, they will need the ability to test it first.
“We offer a number of additional services to get customers on board. Training test pilots for the software, seeding devices and all the commercial stuff, such as finance services, extended warranty, to help our resellers build a proposition.
Understanding
“The market has evolved enormously and it’s important these resellers can look at the different choices that are out there in the market place.
He concluded: “We have hugely evolved as a business and it’s not just about the selling of smartphones any more.
“We need to be at the forefront of enterprise mobility, and we need to be able to show not only an understanding of all the types of enterprise mobility solutions, be it the free solutions right to the most sophisticated, but we also need to be able to provide the education and consultation to those resellers.”
* Figures from Techtarget
Full article in Mobile News issue 564 (May 19, 2014).
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