IDC APAC believes this will change the future of VMware’s end user computing business in APAC
VMware announced on January 22, 2014 that it will acquire AirWatch, one of the leaders in the crowded enterprise mobility management market.
The US$1.54 billion deal ($1.175 billion cash, $365 million unvested stock) arrived a little less than a year after AirWatch secured a $200 million series A investment from Insight Venture Partners in February 2013.
IDC expects the deal will dramatically strengthen VMware’s position in the end user computing market worldwide as well as allow it to finally be able to break into the highly competitive enterprise mobility market once the deal is finalized and solutions are fully integrated.
While VMware’s acquisition of AirWatch is significant in its own right globally, IDC Asia/Pacific believes this development will fundamentally change the future of VMware’s end user computing business in Asia/Pacific.
As the most mobilized region in the world, Asia/Pacific has been painfully slow to adopt enterprise mobility outside of a few pockets of developed countries and organizations. The Asia/Pacific region is perhaps the most diverse region in the world in terms of market maturity, ranging from highly developed markets of Japan, Korea, Singapore and Australia; to emerging economies like Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam.
Going to market with something as complex as enterprise mobility, where both technical challenges and business drivers are highly ambiguous, is difficult to say the least. This, of course, has not deterred vendors from trying to enter the region. At last count, MobileIron, AirWatch, SAP, Citrix, VMware, IBM and many others have significant resources dedicated to enterprise mobility in Asia/Pacific.
However, the underlying challenge for enterprise mobility vendors is that most customers in Asia/Pacific are simply not ready for sophisticated mobility solutions from the likes of SAP, Citrix, and to some extent, VMware.
