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July 19, 2010

For many companies today, security usually represents a rather difficult challenge they face when supporting a mobile workforce spread over many cities and across several different time zones.

However, a centrally managed mobility service can solve security issues and concerns without encroaching the company's IT resources or exponentially increasing the burden for its team.

Mobility today involves MIDs (mobile Internet devices) leaving the security of the corporate network and firewall, and companies now expect service providers to have a sound security plan for keeping devices and data secure.

Critical aspects of mobile security today include:

On-device password and data encryption

Remote device kill and data deletion for lost or stolen devices

Antivirus and firewall protection for handheld devices, including call filtering

Remote delivery of Win32 security patch updates

Over-the-air encryption technology

Overall, MID full-scale management is another top priority for many businesses today. As the smartphone market continues to expand, companies want to support each type of device rather than define a single device as a corporate standard.

Furthermore, the ultimate ability today to support multiple mobile devices such as Android, BlackBerry, the iPad, the iPhone and the Symbian OS has a broad appeal to companies of all sizes.

With so many budget cuts and IT resources stretched to the limit, many IT departments are now running so lean that they are having trouble keeping their data centers up and running. They also have to manage users in different regions and workplace settings and keep software and hardware up-to-date at all times.

Overall, managed mobility solutions offer these companies a viable option for enterprises that are feeling the IT squeeze.

With MaaS (mobility as a service) being positioned as an alternative for companies that normally would have to build their own mobility security solutions, the market is ripe for wireless carriers, operators and system integrators to offer these new revenue-generating services.

MMSS (managed mobility security services) will help retain customers and gain new ones, create additional revenue streams and better leverage economies of scale to deliver services quickly to new customers.

Wireless carriers today need to look beyond their historic areas of strength and revenues and find other ways to drive new business.

MMSS presents a great opportunity to provide expertise in security, MID management and application development and offer today's businesses a one-stop solution for all mobility services and at all times.

Last month, Motorola said that its Enterprise Mobility Solutions (EMS) division is steadily growing and now the company is predicting a compounded annual growth rate of between 5 to 8 percent over the next few years, with opportunities to sell equipment and services into public-safety and vertical market enterprises.

As Motorola prepares to separate its wireless handset business and networks division into two separate companies in 2011, Cowen wireless equipment analyst Matt Hoffman said the research firm thinks the EMS business will be Motorola's largest unit in 2010.

Gene Delaney, president of Motorola's EMS division says “overall, investors often focus on the handset business with Motorola when they look at the stock. But with the changing fortunes in mobile devices business, our EMS division has become the central engine of Motorola, something we think investors will pay greater attention to as the company's two divisions split comes up in the first part of 2011.”

While last year was a down one for the EMS side of Motorola's sales, the unit still posted an operating income of $1 billion on revenues of $9 billion, even as sales dropped over 12.9 percent.

For the first quarter of 2010, Motorola reported a sales increase of 6 percent year over year to $1.7 billion and $271 million of operating income, up 25 percent compared to the year-ago period.

Speaking at Cowen.'s 38th Annual Technology and Telecom Conference, Delaney noted that Motorola's entrenchment in the public-safety sector is likely to earn it future business because the government sales cycle is long and Motorola equipment is deeply embedded into existing equipment.

He added “overall, backward compatibility is a much more important topic than it really sounds.”

“Technology continues to evolve all the time. Our products and our solutions become part of the way that our customers do their jobs, so as new technologies emerge in the marketplace you have to bring this legacy with you,” added Delaney.

Additionally, Motorola sees many opportunities ahead for its services business as well. The company has a NOC (Network Operation Center) at its Schaumberg, Illinois headquarters so it already monitors networks for public-safety agencies and enterprise users.

However, Motorola still thinks it can do more hosting services for municipalities, device management for the enterprise and other services and expects an uptick in that sector of the business in the second half of 2010 and for most of next year.

And while about 57.2 percent of Motorola's EMS business takes place in North America, the company is expanding its efforts globally, Delaney said, adding that a few years ago about 65 percent of Motorola's business took place in North America.

Motorola continued to invest in R&D last year and will do so going forward, Delaney said, noting that innovation and research are essential to Motorola's brand.

Delaney said the company is the market leader in government, retail, hospitality, transport and logistics sectors, with sales of $9.2 billion, $1.9 billion and $1.8 billion, respectively.

The company is strong in manufacturing ($1.7 billion), energy ($800 million) and wholesale ($500 million) segments. The equipment maker sees opportunities ahead in the telecom, healthcare, education and professional services markets.

Delaney added that the move to next-generation public-safety deployments, and increased video use, is a growth opportunity for the company.

Video applications are ideally suited for public-safety responders, Delaney explained. While there is plenty of video today used by emergency personnel, the opportunities ahead are immense. Video should enable police to enter a hostile situation aware of what is going on at the scene, while video could let a fireman see the fire before he confronts it.

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Source: MSIM.