What Does Google’s Acquisition Of Motorola Mobility Mean To I&O Professionals?
Google sent shock waves through the mobile world this morning as it announced a planned acquisition of Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in cash. The initial commentary has largely focused around Motorola’s patent portfolio, how this will affect the other Android manufacturers, and what Google will do with the rest of Moto’s hardware business which my colleague John McCarthy summed up nicely in his blog post.
So what kind of an impact does this have on infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals? For the most part, not much of one. I&O professionals are working to make their organizations platform-agnostic by deploying mobile device management (MDM) solutions. For them, Android is only one in an increasingly crowded space of platforms including iOS, Blackberry, and Windows 7 Mobile.
Still, there is one interesting implication in this deal that I&O pros should take note of — Google gets 3LM. Back in February Motorola Mobility acquired 3LM, a startup including former Google employees who worked on Android, which specializes in enterprise security and management software. Rumors had already been flying that some of the 3LM functionality like storage encryption and anti-malware would be included in the next version of Android (Ice Cream Sandwich). With 3LM now a part of Google, firms might finally management and security capabilities I&O and security pros have been asking for in Android.
So while this deal might not directly affect I&O professionals in their day to day operations it does show an additional $12.5 billion commitment from Google to the Android platform and its future. Given the increasing amount of Android devices connecting to corporate networks every day, we’ve written reports stating that firms should include Android (among others operating systems) in their next generation mobile support strategies and work to adopt MDM solutions which take advantage of all of the available management and security APIs. Android still has plenty of room to grow within the enterprise and this acquisition could bring some of the critical pieces to help it along.