Mobility security market set for takeoff

IDC pegs western European CAGR at 30 per cent as cloud and IT consumerisation drive spending

The enterprise mobility management and security market is set for sensational growth over the next four years as cloud computing and the consumerisation of IT drive enterprise spending.

IDC predicts that the annual worth of the western European market will stretch to $763m (£470m) in 2015. This equates to a five-year compound annual growth rate of a meaty 30 per cent. The analyst's EMEA research director for mobile enterprise strategies, Nicholas McQuire, claimed that the need for staff mobility will force businesses to splash the cash on security.

"Enterprise mobility is becoming mission-critical, but implementing security, policy and compliance across a diverse set of devices, networks and applications remains a hurdle," he said. "The consumerisation of IT, the acceleration of mobile enterprise applications and cloud computing are driving a greater convergence of management and security requirements that operate across the device, network and application layers of enterprise mobility."

IDC's research finds that many European companies currently pondering their cloud strategy are taking a long, hard look at SaaS-based mobile device management and security. Hosted models allow end users to put security in place much more expeditiously, asserted McQuire.

"Customers rationalising mobility requirements today often don't have the time, resource or business case to pilot, evaluate, install, and configure capex-based on-premises solutions, so they are turning to the cloud, both public and private, as an alternative, to be up and running in hours as opposed to days," he added.