In addition, King says, the unified management platform promises to ease efforts required of data center staff. "I’m also impressed by the degree to which PureSystems' 'patterns' leverage assets and skills provided by IBM’s ISV partners." In essence, the company is taking an approach that’s nearly diametrically opposite of the direction competitors like Oracle are heading in with highly integrated, highly homogenous vertical stacks, he says.
"With the acquisition of Mobile Foundation, IBM is repeating a BMC best practice and bringing in a cross-platform offering with the people who understand this business," says Enderle. Since Worklight doesn't have clients of its own anymore, it has the advantage of being client-agnostic, which could be incredibly important to IT executives.
"IBM is able to stand above this and, unlike the folks that build handsets, deal equally with all of them. Given that IT doesn’t really want any responsibility for the handsets, but does have to provide centralized access to them, this IBM offering should be compelling to potential IT buyers."
King thinks IBM’s new Foundation for Mobile Computing is probably a riskier wager in that it’s making a sizable bet that mobility in the enterprise will fundamentally alter the traditional telecom market.
"It could be right, and given IBM’s penetration among enterprise customers--which is far more profound than anything the company attained in the telecom space--IBM could do very well here by providing clients foundational mobility management technologies," he says. "The changes rumbling through the workplace and among consumers due to adoption of mobile devices including smart phones and tablets looks to me to be a tectonic shift akin to the arrival of PCs in the late '80s and early '90s. The new Foundation for Mobile Computing suggests that, just as it did before, IBM intends to take a stand at the epicenter of this technological earthquake."
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