Picture this: it’s 2008. All across the country, everyone from tech geeks to regular Joes are getting familiar with the new kid on the phone block, Apple’s iPhone.
Just as the iPhone is all the rage, so too are the apps that people are starting to get familiar with. Despite some detractors’ insistence that people don’t want their phones to be more than phones, customers are latching on quick. People are learning to love Evernote, and the New York Times app, and everything in between.
In summary, the smartphone and its sidekick, the mobile app, are on the rise.
While the launch of the iPhone, and subsequently the App Store, were a full decade ago at this point, in many was the enterprise is still living like it’s 2008.
We mentioned something similar a few months ago when we asserted that MAM isn’t dead–in fact, it’s just the opposite. While many of us predicted in, say, 2011 after the iPhone, its Android competitors, and the emerging app market became mainstream that they would quickly make their way into the enterprise, in reality, that transition has taken longer than any of us expected.
Many of us in the industry thought that mobile devices and apps would convey to the enterprise in a few years–slowly, to be sure, but not quite at a glacial pace. Needless to say, if we’d have bet on the timeline at that point, we would have lost our shirts.
Some ten years later, we’re hearing over and over again from companies that are just now getting ready to roll out a mobile strategy and think about building out an app store. We’re learning quickly that the delay from the consumer market to the enterprise is best measured in years, not in months or quarters.
Interestingly enough, in the midst of all this delay, enterprises have also realized that MDM more than likely isn’t the answer. Companies want app deployment control and security at the app level rather than security at the device level. MDM was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction that the market thought was good for a while, but which hasn’t stood the test of time.
MAM may not be the most sophisticated solution around, but the good thing is that it’s simple and it works. Despite the fact that it’s happening much later in the process than we expected, we’re not at all surprised to see an MAM revival happening today. If you’re late to the enterprise mobility game and are looking for a way to get your feet wet, we’re here to tell you: look no further than MAM.
