Verizon's new managed mobility solution signals beginning of trend

Verizon today introduced a new managed mobility offering targeted at international companies trying to manage multiple mobile devices, usage plans and applications across multiple operators, and putting itself in direct competition with the likes of AT&T and British Telecom.

The company introduced a new suite of services that addresses five key areas: Inventory and expense management; logistics (automating device deployments); mobile device management, mobile security and application management, which is coming next year. The four "modules" are targeted for a Sept. 30 launch in the United States and 19 countries in Europe with a roll-out in the Asia-Pacific region slated for later this year.

"Our target market is large multinational companies," said Amanda Chesley, manager of Verizon's Managed Mobility Solutions in an interview with FierceMobileIT. "We've been working on this for 18 months. It's definitely a solution that is carrier neutral and focuses on both wireless and wireline...It is a single foundation leveraged by a single database."

At the heart of the offering is best-of-breed solutions. Verizon chose to use Quickcomm's telecom expense management platform for the integrated inventory and expense management and device logistics pieces of the offering. The company also tapped Sybase's enterprise device management platform to not only manage devices across the enterprise but perform security functions such as encryption and lock/wipe policies.

One unique piece of Verizon's offering is the company's introduction of a set of IT consulting services to help organizations, among other things, develop mobility deployment strategies, create mobile device policies or evaluate mobile security. Carrie MacGillivray, senior research analyst with IDC, said such an offering has yet to be seen in the market. "We don't know how it is going to resonate," she said.

Most importantly, Verizon's offering marks a shift from niche solutions to one-stop packages of managed solutions as mobile devices become entrenched in the enterprise and corporations are challenged to rein in costs globally, McGillivray said. She expects more big announcements to come down the pipe, most likely from system integrators looking to move out of their niche positions. That makes Verizon's partnership with Quickcomm and Sybase all the more important for these companies.

"As we move into a much more broad adoption of mobile technology in everyday business use, businesses are looking for packaged solutions," Robert Veitch, senior director of business development with Sybase told FierceMobileIT. "That's a very important shift in the marketplace...It's a managed service offering that should, with little customization, meet the needs of large enterprises."

Let the managed mobility services battle begin. - Lynnette