Today, we released our updated “The Forrester Wave™: Unified Endpoint Management, Q4 2019.” This is the second year we’ve published our unified endpoint management (UEM) Wave (you can find last year’s report here), and this year, we looked at the top 13 vendors in the market today and evaluated them across 23 criteria. Organizations looking to improve employee experience (EX) and simplify device management can use UEM to solve many of the traditional challenges associated with device management, such as device diversity, legacy app distribution, multiple passwords, and targeted mobile and PC attacks. UEM providers address these issues by providing:

  • A single console for managing traditional and mobile endpoints, as well as newer types of devices such as Chromebooks and smart glasses.
  • Tools for helping infrastructure and operations (I&O) organizations migrate to cloud-based modern management at a convenient pace.
  • A unified digital workspace for accessing native, web, software-as-a-service, virtualized apps, and legacy apps.
  • Conditional access and risk-based authentication to cloud resources, sometimes eliminating the need for passwords.
  • Protection, detection, and response capabilities across traditional and mobile endpoints.

There are five Leaders in today’s market: VMware, IBM, Citrix, Microsoft, and MobileIron. This year, our evaluation focused heavily on how the respective UEM Leaders improve EX, a top business priority for 2020. We found that the Leaders do this by enabling I&O teams to:

  • Automate mundane workflows, such as submitting expense reports, via microapps.
  • Monitor end-user experience through analytics that track app usage, device performance, etc. (We recently published another report on this topic here.)
  • Automate key areas of the PC lifecycle, enabling a smoother onboarding experience for employees.
  • Embrace passwordless approaches to authentication, eliminating friction for employees.

Another three vendors — BlackBerry, Sophos, and Matrix 42 — are Strong Performers; Ivanti (nonparticipant), ManageEngine, and 42Gears are Contenders; and Baramundi Software and Snow Software are Challengers.

With the importance of employee experience growing, now is the time to consider automating and modernizing your management stack with UEM to support the modern workforce. If you want to benchmark your current UEM against the providers in our Wave or are looking for a new provider, this Forrester Wave is the best starting point for you. Your criteria may differ, so we recommend that you go beyond the Forrester Wave graphic and:

  • Download the Excel sheet associated with the graphic (Figure 2 in the report).
  • View the detailed evaluations in the scoring guide.
  • Adapt the criteria weightings to fit your needs so you can see customized rankings of the providers.

For more information, Forrester clients may request an inquiry with Andrew Hewitt.