2014 has been a very exciting year for us. We’re growing, which is always a plus. But there’s more to it than that. All around the industry, there have been continued signs that mobile apps and MAM are in the big leagues, from Apple’s acquisition of TestFlight earlier this year to Yahoo’s more recent acquisition of Flurry.
MAM is finally starting to get the attention it deserves, and we think that’s a very good thing.
Now that we’re over halfway through 2014 (can you believe it?), we thought it would be a good time to take a moment and hash out some of our observations about what’s going on in MAM. Needless to say, we’ve come a long way even since just a year ago. Have a look below:
- More people are more educated than ever about MAM: Prospects are coming to us far more educated than before. For us, this is making the conversation (and sales cycle) much easier all the way around. And across the board, this means that more people know exactly what they want—no more fluff.
- Some people’s needs still aren’t being met: We’ve also seen an insurgence of businesses with their own MDM plans in place already. Many of these businesses also have their own app stores in place, too. The trouble is, their needs aren’t being completely met. Even those businesses with MDM in place often haven’t paid enough attention to full MAM solutions.
- It’s all about the systems management approach: Which brings us to our next point: it’s not just about the app store anymore. Businesses need and want crash logs, analytics, remote configuration, and security all on a data private platform. This is a trend we’ve seen coming for a while now, but it’s good to see businesses realizing that it’s not enough to just have an app or an app store. Analytics are essential.
- Businesses are looking for quicker turnarounds: Finally, more businesses are coming to us with active projects that need deployment within 1 to 2 months—in contrast to research projects for next year’s budget like we saw so much in years prior. This points to an increased sense of urgency, and likely reflects the broader education we mentioned above.
With more awareness than ever about MAM, now’s a great time to be involved in the space. And as a business, it’s also as good a time as ever to get on board and start developing your enterprise app store and MAM plan if you haven’t already.
At this point along the line, the tools are out there—it’s up to you whether or not you use them. We think you can guess which path we’d recommend.
