ITWire

To help organisations manage the bring your own device trend, the foundation includes new software from IBM Endpoint Manager to "help customers deliver a single solution that effectively manages and secures all endpoints." For example, this allows organizations to wipe enterprise data and applications from endpoints when needed. These unified capabilities extend from servers and laptops, to smartphones and tablets."

In its announcement IBM said it had BM had been "steadily investing in the mobile space for more than a decade, both organically and through acquisitions: building a complete portfolio of software and services that delivers enterprise-ready mobility for clients."

However it was only in 2009 that the company indicated plans to focus R&D on mobiles. In June that year it announced that it would shift some $US100m of annual R&D spend into mobiles in a "major research effort" that aimed to "drive new intelligence into the underpinnings of the mobile web to create new efficiencies in business operations and people's daily lives."

However for company the size of IBM, that was small beer: in 2007 it spent $US6.2b in R&D. And it seemed to have no idea of the size of the mobile market. Announcement of the initiative it said: "According to IBM's Institute for Business Value, the number of mobile users will grow by 191 percent from 2006 to 2011 to reach approximately one billion users." The International Telecommunication Union had already announced that the number of users had passed the four billion mark at the end of 2008.

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