Good Technology, BoxTone: EMM Consolidation to Continue
With Good Technology agreeing to acquire mobile service management (MSM) company BoxTone yesterday, the enterprise mobility management (EMM) market is looking a little slim — but channel partners shouldn’t expect the market’s diet to slow down any time soon.
Both BoxTone and Good Technology executives have made one thing clear about today’s EMM space: market consolidation will continue in 2014. The companies pointed to previous EMM acquisitions, including VMware’s (VMW) acquisition of AirWatch and IBM‘s acquisition of privately-held mobile management and security company Fiberlink Communications, as examples.
Mobile management consolidation: more ahead
Good Technology CMO Lynn Lucas told MSPmentor that Good expects to see “continuing consolidation in the market,” which follows a time when many vendors were offering MDM. The consolidation has changed things.
“You’ve seen us make an acquisition, and we think that Good Technology, along with a few others, will remain as solution vendors.”
Good’s acquisition strategy revolves around “new innovative ideas to add to the user experience and increase IT capabilities, which may include ideas from other companies,” Lucas said.
“We will continue our history of acquisition, where it makes sense, to expand our portfolio and enable a broader value proposition for our channel partners,” she said.
BoxTone CMO Brian Reed, who, along with other BoxTone executives, has agreed to stay onboard for the ride, said larger vendors in the EMM market have had a “good wake-up call in the last six months.”
For instance, larger vendors are beginning to realize that their customers need mobile capabilities to be a core part of their portfolios, Reed said.
“If you look at the history of IT, some of those bigger guys, they usually buy their way into new markets,” he said. “You know, go buy a best-of-breed with some market share and some good IP, and that’s how they enter into an adjacent market.”
Last week, Gartner Enterprise Mobility Research Director Bryan Taylor provided a similar outlook on today’s EMM space. According to Taylor, “the consolidation of the highly competitive EMM market through mergers, acquisitions, and exits was inevitable.”
Channel partner outlook
Lucas said the company’s acquisition of BoxTone is “great news for both companies’ channel partners.”
“Good Technology’s channel partners now can expand their solutions with the world’s only mobile service management portfolio,” she said. “BoxTone’s partners can expand with the world’s leading secure mobility solutions, including seamless integration with the largest shipping selection of leading business apps.”
Lucas added: “This acquisition will enable us to package up offerings for channel partners so they can extend even more value to their end-user customers, while growing their own business.”
With regards to any collision between Good’s partners and BoxTone’s partners, Reed said, as far as he could tell, “there should be like zero collisions in the market.”
“There shouldn’t be any partner washout at all in this,” he said. “There doesn’t appear to be any partner conflicts from what I saw in the process we went through of putting the deal together.”
Follow CJ Arlotta on Twitter @cjarlotta for further updates on the story above.
