IDC OPINION
Since the unified endpoint management (UEM) market evolved from the enterprise mobility management (EMM) market in 2018 — unifying PC and mobile device management — the industry has learned that a single UEM platform is unlikely to rule across all device management use cases. According to IDC’s 2023 Enterprise Device Management Survey, more than 70% of enterprises that have deployed UEM tools have at least two products in their environment. (More than one-third of firms have three or more UEM products in production.) While the market share in UEM is consolidating among a few top vendors, there are still dozens of established vendors, as well as new market entrants, with capable products and viable business models yielding customer success and growth. This is because UEM deployments have evolved into multivendor scenarios, with various software products targeting specific device or operational use cases. For example, knowledge workers, retail employees, delivery drivers, hospital staff, first responders, and factory workers all use PCs and mobile devices in daily activities, but in very different ways, and often with widely different types of devices. The ongoing deployment, provisioning, configuration, and life-cycle management of these digital tools often goes to UEM platforms best suited for the operational use case.
This is not to say converging all endpoint management under a single UEM isn’t achievable. Many enterprises, and small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) especially, are moving toward this goal to reduce vendor cost and multiconsole management complexity and to move to the proverbial “single pane of glass” for controlling all corporate devices. Many UEM platforms are fit for this purpose. This end goal is certainly achievable for many enterprises by considering the solutions from the 19 vendors in this IDC MarketScape.
