IBM to acquire Fiberlink Communications

With Fiberlink’s MaaS360 cloud-based offerings, IBM will expand its bring your own device (BYOD) capabilities to deliver a complete mobile management and security solution through IBM MobileFirst that includes trusted transactions and security intelligence capabilities for mobile apps, users, content and data.

This announcement is another milestone in IBM’s strategy to build the industry’s most comprehensive set of mobile capabilities while eliminating barriers to adoption and accelerating the productivity benefits of mobility. At the same time, IBM is expanding the vision for enterprise mobility management to also include secure transactions between businesses, partners and customers.

“In a mobile first world, clients require a comprehensive mobile management and security offering. Often times they integrate solutions on their own and take on unnecessary risk,” said Robert LeBlanc, IBM senior vice president, Middleware Software. “To protect and enhance the complete mobile experience, it’s crucial to secure the app, user, content, data and the transaction. The acquisition of Fiberlink will enable us to offer these expanded capabilities to our clients, making it simple and quick to unlock the full potential of mobility.”

Today’s announcement builds on the IBM MobileFirst strategy of bringing all mobile resources together in one platform. For example, organizations of all sizes will be able to build secure apps by design with IBM Worklight and IBM Security AppScan, deliver trusted transactions through integrated threat intelligence with Trusteer, and improve the user experience with Tealeaf. Now organizations can break free from one-size-fits-all security strategies and create more flexible, personalized mobile experiences that balance enterprise security with user privacy.

MaaS360 will become part of IBM’s Software as a Service (SaaS) portfolio of more than 100 cloud services. IBM plans to offer MaaS360 on the IBM SoftLayer cloud infrastructure.

Maximizing the Productivity Benefits of Mobility
A new report by the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV)1 found that using mobility to enable a more productive workforce is an important goal for many organizations. In fact, half of the respondents reported a greater than 10 percent gain in employee productivity as a result of their mobile efforts. Additionally, the majority of respondents (58 percent) claimed “faster response time to customers” as one of the most important benefits of using mobile to improve employee productivity.

MaaS360 is being used across a variety of industries worldwide including financial services, healthcare and manufacturing. Using a cloud-based delivery model, MaaS360 decreases the amount of time and cost required for IT teams to support corporate BYOD programs. MaaS360 end-users can often enrol devices in less than five minutes with self-service.

“While the proliferation of mobile devices provides great flexibility and agility for organizations, it also increases the complexity to manage and protect corporate data,” said Jim Sheward, CEO, Fiberlink. “We are looking forward to becoming part of IBM’s strategy to put mobile first and deliver holistic mobile device and app management and security for today’s always-connected workforce.”

MaaS360 will enable IBM to offer either cloud-based or on-premise mobile device management (MDM), mobile content management (MCM), and mobile application management (MAM) including containerization. Organizations will gain the building blocks to separate personal from enterprise data and content on mobile devices.

Additionally, the combination of IBM Endpoint Manager and MaaS360 will allow IBM to offer Unified Device Management, supporting either SaaS or on-premise deployments for all of an organization’s endpoints – from laptop, desktop and server to mobile devices. IBM also offers a range of other security solutions and services that address common enterprise mobility challenges including IBM Security Access Manager for Cloud and Mobile.