International Business Machines unveiled its expanded mobile strategy on Thursday in an effort to gain an advantage over rivals amid a proliferation of devices such as smartphones and tablets.<\/p>\n
The technology services company will offer customers a portfolio of products for security, device management as well as analytics and application development, the company said.<\/p>\n
Using what IBM calls MobileFirst, “businesses can now streamline everything from the management of employee’s mobile devices, to the creation of a new mobile commerce app”, the company said.<\/p>\n
Lopez Research analyst Maribel Lopez said any company who wanted to succeed in the future needed to be strong in mobile.<\/p>\n
“This is critical for IBM because the future of computing is based on a couple of technologies: cloud, mobile and big data,” she said.<\/p>\n
“If IBM can actually educate the market that it has a pretty comprehensive (mobile) suite, that positions them really well,” she said.<\/p>\n
Currently, only German business software maker SAP was closest in offering a comparable comprehensive mobile strategy, Lopez added.<\/p>\n
IBM has made 10 acquisitions since 2006 to boost its mobile offering, most recently TeaLeaf and Worklight.<\/p>\n
TeaLeaf is a provider of mobile analytics and Worklight is maker of development and management software for tablets and smartphones.<\/p>\n
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