Mobileiron Season 2

In July 2012 I wrote about  Why Mobileiron stands out in MDM, according to Gartner I liked the company and their potential Mobile Device Management (MDM), as they were undisputed leaders. See the Gartner MDM Magic Quadrant from 2012
Figure 1: Gartner Magic Quadrant MDM 2012
In 2012 Mobileiron came after 400% sales increase in 2011 and they had an investment of $60M. Since 2012, following the 2011 euphoria, they receive two more rounds of  $88M additional capital, for a total of $148M. That was an increase of  150%.

This is how the Gartner MDM Quadrant looks in 2013.

Figure 2: Gartner MDM Magic Quadrant 2013
What Mobileiron did with this huge capital injection? They started hiring massively left and right. The web site management team looks like Cisco and one can see executive experts in company politics making compromise decisions. Most of them never started a company before.

In 2013,  the landscape changed. In the leaders quadrant we have SAP. Also Citrix  is there - they acquired     Zenprise ,  The former Zenprise CEO and founder Amit Pandey, leads Citrix's new Mobile Platforms product group, although recently there are  reports he left Citrix for greener pastures (*). This creates an unhealthy perception that  an MDM company business is hard to operate without the  original team

These are seasoned and large  enterprise companies, who will take huge chunks from the business potential among the leaders in MDM enterprise space.

Magic Quadrant June 2014

In 2014 Magic Quadrant, we can big threats from IBM and Citrix. Mobileiron wants to go IPO, because it can not compete with the giants. Will an IPO be enough? They are not Facebook. There is no Zuckerberg there.

Some warnings from Gartner 2014 MQ report
Eventually, mobility will not represent a distinct set of platforms with their own management requirements. Mobile devices will be one of many components in a user's personal cloud. IT's job will be to manage access to and policy for each user's personal cloud
If that happens before MobileIron cashes out through some form of exit, they will disappear like the smoke from a  dwindling fire.


(*) See report from Gigaom

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