Here's Who Made Gartner's 2015 Magic Quadrant For Enterprise Mobility Management

Top Enterprise Mobility Management Vendors

Technology leaders in the mobility space cheered Monday as market research firm Gartner released its Magic Quadrant, the annual report naming vendors with the best Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) suites.

According to Gartner, the Magic Quadrant rates vendors on strengths in mobile device management, mobile application management, mobile identity and mobile content management, and places them in four categories: Niche Players, Visionaries, Challengers and Leaders.

These mobility vendors promote security and device management policies and procedures for customers who need file-level protection, authentication and remote wipe, among other functions.

Here, the top 10 mobile vendors in this year's Gartner's Magic Quadrant for enterprise mobility management.

Methodology

Gartner's Magic Quadrant ranks mobility vendors based on their ability to execute and completeness of vision.

Completeness of vision is along the x-axis, while ability to execute is along the y-axis of the quadrant. Players in the Magic Quadrant are placed into four categories moving along the x-axis and y-axis. Niche Players are vendors that rank low in both execution and vision; Visionaries have a complete vision but weak execution; Challengers are vendors that have strong execution but weak vision; and Leaders excel at both vision and execution.

This year's Magic Quadrant added a new vendor, Microsoft, and dropped three vendors from the previous year: Symantec, Tangoe and Absolute Software.

Niche Player: BlackBerry

BlackBerry made an appearance under the Niche Players division of Gartner's Magic Quadrant.

Gartner said the Waterloo, Ontario-based company has capitalized on its BlackBerry Enterprise Service 12 (BES12) platform, released in 2014, which provides a mobile management platform for BlackBerry devices, including functions like split billing and access management.

BlackBerry has also made investments in its Internet of Things platform, and recently acquired file and data security company WatchDox.

Gartner said the BES12 console is "very well designed" and provides good administration, but still does not support Windows 8.1 or Mac OS X, and customers have cited usability problems with the platform's Secure Work Space solution.

Challenger: SAP

SAP Mobile Secure made an appearance on Gartner's Magic Quadrant under the Challengers division.

The German company touts a suite of mobile security products, including Afaria for on-premise mobile device management, SAP Mobile Documents and SAP Mobile App Protection.

"SAP Mobile Secure is a good fit for companies that own SAP products and value the extension of those products within a single vendor's offering, although the product does not require an existing SAP back end," Gartner said.

While SAP Mobile Secure has strong reporting, Gartner noted, its administration interface is disjointed and it lacks a proprietary secure PIM capability.

Visionary: Sophos

Sophos made the Visionary division of Gartner's Magic Quadrant for its EMM product, which targets customers who want to secure their PCs and mobile devices through endpoint and network-based technologies.

Gartner said that Sophos' products are good for customers looking for integrated endpoint encryption and EMM from the same console, and that Sophos' products were easy to administer and use as a significant product strength.

However, according to Gartner, the England-based company's solution can be slower to support the latest advancements in mobile technology, such as Android for Work, which it is does not plan to support until later in 2015.

Visionary: Microsoft

Microsoft was named to the Visionary division of Gartner's Magic Quadrant. The Redmond, Wash.-based company provides an Enterprise Mobility Suite product, which includes Microsoft Intune, Azure Active Directory Premium and Azure Rights Management.

Intune, in particular, supports Office 365 and integration of System Center Configuration Manager, allowing organizations to manage PCs and mobile devices through the same license and console. Gartner noted that Intune has unique technical capabilities to manage the Office Mobile apps on iOS and Android devices.

However, one drawback of Intune is that it does not support mobile device management APIs of Android for Work or other handset manufacturers, such as LG and HTC, Gartner found.

Visionary: SOTI

SOTI made the Visionary division of Gartner's Magic Quadrant for its MobiControl Android+ technology. This product allows management of Android devices with configuration management capability.

According to Gartner, SOTI is used less frequently as an enterprise mobility management product in workplaces with dominant bring-your-own- device policies.

Gartner said SOTI's comprehensive support of Android products makes its EMM solutions strong for this space. However, while Soti has strong support for Android devices and legacy Windows Mobile, it has a small percentage of iOS devices that are under management.

Leader: IBM

IBM was named in the Leader division of Gartner's Magic Quadrant, mostly because of its MobileFirst Protect enterprise mobility management suite. This suite manages three various operating systems, including iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

The suite includes tools to secure, manage, build and analyze mobile customer experiences. Gartner said that customers consistently praise IBM's MobileFirst Protect suite for its ease of deployment, and that installations can be personalized to meet company needs. Gartner also highlighted a drawback to IBM's EMM solutions: Customers had to deal with console and administration issues.

Leader: Good Technology

Good Technology made an appearance on Gartner's EMM Magic Quadrant again as a Leader. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company released its Good Work solution, which builds on the Good Dynamics Secure Mobility Platform and promotes security functionalities such as multifactor authentication and single sign-on.

Good's EMM suite is a strong contender for organizations with firm security requirements and companies that have compliancy policies to deal with. According to Gartner, Good's service management capabilities are "among the best in class," but the Good Work platform is still fairly new and has end-user functional limitations on Android, iOS and Windows Phone.

Leader: Citrix

Citrix was listed as a Leader in Gartner's EMM Magic Quadrant for its XenMobile product, which includes several MDM features for customers, including a self-service portal for users and support for Android for Work.

Gartner's report listed Citrix's ShareFile as one of the strongest mobile content management solutions among EMM vendors, and said the company gets "high marks for user experience."

However, Gartner also said it could not find many reference customers with very large current deployments of more than 10,000 devices that were purchasing Citrix's product.

Leader: Airwatch by VMWare

AirWatch by VMWare was again listed as a Leader in Gartner's enterprise mobility management Magic Quadrant.

AirWatch offers EMM functionality solutions through its AirWatch Mobile Device Management. These solutions and products have broadened after its acquisition by VMWare in February 2014. According to Gartner, AirWatch is a good fit for organizations that need a comprehensive EMM feature for a broad range of platforms, and AirWatch's strengths fall under its ability to make large-scale deployments across most vertical markets.

However, Gartner said in its report, customers say that AirWatch's Inbox email application lacks maturity, which causes clients to use third-party PIM products.

Leader: MobileIron

MDM company MobileIron was listed as a Leader on Gartner's EMM Magic Quadrant. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company offers a variety of MDM and MCM solutions for the workplace.

"MobileIron's strategy continues to be to enable an 'open' ecosystem of devices and mobile applications, and to protect access and information through server-side functions," according to Gartner's report. "This strategy can also add cost and complexity for customers that prefer a single-vendor solution for EMM along with other mobile-relevant products, such as EFSS, collaboration and anti-malware."

While Gartner praised MobileIron's products, including Docs@Work and AppConnect, it noted that MobileIron's infrastructure is appliance-based and difficult to monitor for availability and performance.