VMware outlines vision for future of business mobility; launches industry's first Identity-as-a-service offering

VMware outlined its vision for the future of business mobility with new solutions, services and partnerships to enable organizations to transform business processes. The company’s strategy aims to free businesses from more than a decade of client-server focused IT – which enabled mobile access to a limited number of productivity applications – and now deliver a more user- and application-centric experience for the enterprise.

“Business Mobility is more than a shift in technology; it is an opportunity for true business process transformation,” said Sanjay Poonen, executive vice president and general manager, End-User Computing, VMware. “Business Mobility will be a key driver of economic value for the next decade – truly reorienting businesses around mobile innovation, apps and services. As a result, the adage ‘adapt or perish’ has never been truer than it is today.”

More than ever, enterprises are dealing with two fundamental pain points – providing secure identity and access to an increasingly mobile workforce, and managing the growing diversity of applications, data and devices. These trends are breaking traditional IT; causing network access security controls designed for the Client-Server Era, to no longer meet needs of the Mobile-Cloud Era. With IT having little to no control over an employee’s choice of endpoint operating systems, the need to manage employee identity is a fundamental element for enabling Business Mobility.

For Employees, this means having a unified experience across all of their devices, while having ubiquitous access to all of their applications, content and services. For Businesses (and lines of business), this means having an environment that can do much more than just enhance individual productivity. And for IT Organizations, this means that the requirements for security, management and networking are changing. Identity and device management must now come together.

Examining the business impact and organizational attitudes toward Business Mobility, a February 2015 report by Forrester Research found that, “If you limit the view of enterprise mobility to bring your own devices (BYOD) or apps, you're missing out on the bigger opportunity of enabling the people in your workforce to make the most of their mobile moments. Enhance interactions with customers and colleagues to help employees take direct action and get things done wherever they are.”

The VMware Identity Manager delivers the industry’s first Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) offering integrated with a leading, enterprise-class mobility management and security solution. VMware Identity Manager enables enterprise identity management that meets consumer-grade expectations with secure, one-touch access to web, mobile and Windows applications. Offered as a cloud service or as an on-premises solution, VMware Identity Manager enables organizations to empower employees to become productive quickly with a self-service application store, which provides a delightful end-user experience. IT gains a central place to manage end-user provisioning, access and compliance, with enterprise-class directory integration, identity federation and user analytics.

Key features and capabilities of VMware Identity Manager include:

· One-Touch Single Sign-On from any device to web, mobile and Windows applications without modification or app wrapping to help streamline access.

· Unique Adaptive Access is delivered by a tight integration between VMware Identity Manager and AirWatch® Enterprise Mobility Management™. This integration provides an additional factor of authentication from enrolled devices that is both stronger and easier to use than passwords, while also maintaining conditional access policies between managed and unmanaged devices.

· A customisable and Context Aware HTML5 Application Portal empowers employees with a simple onboarding experience, automated app provisioning, and more secure application access across any device.

· Enterprise-Class Infrastructure that is reliable and more secure, running in the cloud or on-premises, and federates existing on-premises Microsoft Active Directory infrastructures to centralize end-user management.

VMware Identity Manager is available immediately as part of the AirWatch by VMware Blue and Yellow Management bundles, with pricing starting at $150 per end-user, per year. Read more about VMware Identity Manager and visit the AirWatch by VMware pricing page for more information.

Currently supporting Apple iOS and devices through its VMware Horizon and AirWatch by VMware product portfolios, VMware announced that it is furthering its commitment to Apple and the iOS platform with the development of application configuration templates and vertical solutions, in industries like healthcare, airlines, education and others. This will provide users a “single-touch” configured solution, for a wide variety of apps, and facilitate faster on-boarding of mobile devices in the enterprise.

VMware also announced 15 new partners have committed to standardizing public applications and development in the enterprise with ACE (App Configuration for Enterprise). ACE is the open standard approach for managing and securing apps deployed via enterprise mobility management (EMM) solutions. Once an application developer implements ACE standards, users simply download the public-facing application and corporate resources are automatically configured, allowing users to instantly and securely use the application.

Launched earlier this year by AirWatch, Box, Cisco, Salesforce, Workday and Xamarin, new ACE members include bigtincan, Deputy, DocuSign, Dropbox, Everbridge, Imprivata, Kony, Lua, MicroStrategy, OnBase by Hyland, ScrollMotion, ServiceMax, Showpad, Syncplicity by EMC and Webalo. Read more about ACE.