If there was ever any doubt about the way forward for unified endpoint administration (UEM) as a key element of enterprise mobility methods, the now-permanent shift to hybrid and distant work fashions has sealed the deal. UEM has grow to be a vital a part of enterprise efforts to handle this advanced atmosphere.

Forrester Analysis’s 2022 Enterprise Technographics Infrastructure {Hardware} Survey exhibits that 28% of infrastructure {hardware} expertise resolution makers will likely be investing in UEM over the following 12 months. “That is according to earlier years, so we proceed to see secure progress within the UEM market,” says Andrew Hewitt, senior analyst at Forrester.

“Nevertheless, most organizations at this time have a UEM answer in place,” Hewitt provides. “A lot of the offers at this time usually are not net-new, however reasonably replacements of older endpoint administration investments.”

Analysis agency Gartner sees a number of forces shaping the present UEM market, says Dan Wilson, vp and analysis analyst, Digital Office Infrastructure and Operations. One is that distant and hybrid work have completely changed solely in-office work, which has underscored the significance of UEM for managing all endpoint gadgets utilized in a company.

One other drive is integration with endpoint analytics and endpoint safety instruments, to construct proactive and resilient defenses in opposition to better-skilled adversaries, Wilson says. As well as, there’s a higher concentrate on intelligence and automation to drive operational effectivity and enhance digital worker expertise (DEX).

[ How to choose the right UEM platform ]

Traits in UEM

One of many extra notable UEM utilization developments has been the adoption of analytics capabilities for endpoint machine monitoring, says Phil Hochmuth, program vp, enterprise mobility at analysis agency IDC. “This has much less to do with discovering out what staff are doing when it comes to productiveness and extra to do with automating end-user assist,” he says.

Alongside these strains, DEX instruments are making a major splash within the area, Hewitt says. Often known as end-user expertise administration (EUEM) or digital worker expertise administration (DEEM) instruments, DEX software program measures, analyzes, and evaluates worker satisfaction with office expertise, offering firms with steering for enhancements.

“Digital worker expertise monitoring capabilities at the moment are turning into frequent throughout the area,” Hewitt says. “We proceed to see distributors investing in telemetry assortment on the endpoint to drive visibility, benchmarking and remediation use circumstances.” This not solely helps IT directors to enhance expertise on the endpoint, he says, but additionally reduces prices by means of automation of expertise points.

Forrester continues to see downward stress on UEM pricing, as a result of “commodification available in the market in addition to stress from the Microsoft 365 suite, which incorporates Intune administration,” Hewitt says. “Add-ons for digital worker expertise at the next value level is among the newer pricing developments.”

Pricing is constant to shift to a user-based, month-to-month charge mannequin and away from the device-based pricing that has been conventional in UEM, Hochmuth says. “This is a bonus for enterprises, as most customers in organizations are in all probability utilizing two or extra gadgets of their every day digital workspace,” he says.

The main distributors available in the market haven’t modified up to now yr, Hochmuth provides. It’s nonetheless largely concentrated round Microsoft and VMware, with distributors corresponding to Ivanti, BlackBerry, Google, and IBM additionally within the combine, he says.

[ Free download: UEM vendor comparison chart 2023 ] 

Gartner considers UEM to be a mature and secure market, says Wilson. Income progress amongst distributors tends to be pushed by enlargement inside present clients, he says, and the first drivers of the market are modernization of endpoint administration and patching, in addition to automation and improved DEX.

“Though Gartner continues to see elevated adoption of UEM and fashionable [operating system] administration in parallel, we nonetheless advise purchasers to be methodical with the transition from conventional approaches,” Wilson says. “That is very true for these with vital technical debt and complexity, and people with extra inflexible insurance policies and processes.”

Enterprises ought to keep away from ready for the “good” UEM software that addresses all necessities, “as a result of this hardly ever exists,” Wilson says. “As a substitute, select a UEM software that addresses most necessities, then look to fill gaps with complementary instruments.”

Wanting forward

The speedy evolution of software-as-a-service-powered capabilities and the emergence of DEX instruments supply a glimpse into the following evolution of endpoint administration past UEM, Wilson says.

“Over the following three to 5 years, we anticipate that the shortcoming of enterprise IT leaders and managed service suppliers to scale staffing ranges and ability units to fulfill ever-increasing enterprise and cybersecurity calls for will catalyze the adoption of intelligence and automation,” he says. Gartner calls the following section autonomous endpoint administration (AEM).

There may also be a better alignment of UEM and enterprise safety.

“A serious improvement we’re seeing come collectively is the combination of endpoint safety and endpoint administration roles in lots of giant enterprises,” IDC’s Hochmuth says. “Companies are beginning to converge endpoint administration safety into both a single unit of assist workers, or no less than having these two beforehand separate teams work together and collaborate extra intently.”

The elevated concentrate on safety and compliance as a operate of UEM is driving this, in addition to heightened consciousness round threats corresponding to ransomware and endpoint machine compromising through phishing, Hochmuth says.

One other pattern is an elevated must develop “self-healing insurance policies” for endpoint gadgets that may carry them again to a predefined state in the event that they drift, says Forrester’s Hewitt. “Some UEM distributors are investing in making low-code orchestration accessible natively within the product, to allow this kind of workflow,” he says. “If profitable, it will allow IT [administrators] to perform higher quantities of automation inside their platforms.”

DEX will proceed to be a precedence for distributors. A yr in the past, not many UEM platforms had embraced DEX capabilities, in accordance with Hewitt. “Now, most of them do,” he says. “Extra have additionally made progress on the endpoint safety entrance. We anticipate endpoint administration platforms to pursue these two paths over the following [few] years. In two years, UEM as we all know it at this time will look quite a bit totally different. Count on cloud, automation, expertise, and compliance to play a a lot larger function.”

Within the meantime, UEM will stay on the middle of post-pandemic enterprise mobility methods.

Learn subsequent: 

  • UEM vendor comparability chart 2023
  • How to decide on the suitable UEM platform
  • How UEM helps the hybrid office 
  • 8 key applied sciences for the way forward for work

This story was initially revealed in June 2015 and most lately up to date in February 2023. Click on by means of to subsequent pages to see how mobility administration has advanced through the years.