1 Introduction

The landscape of enterprise and personal computing technology is continuously evolving. Traditional management of the desktop computers relied on manual updates of software and patches that layered on top of each other. Later, “Gold Images” of desktop operating systems were used to provide a good know state of the operating system but still required patches on a routine schedule, which would become what was known as traditional management.

As mobile phones became economically available, laptops and tablet computers replaced many stationary desktop computers, which use client management tools. Client management involves capabilities such as OS deployment, software distribution, patch management, monitoring, and remote-control tools to support administration or help automate other support functions typically executed manually. Later, organizations needed to deal with the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) paradigm shift. Organizations required policies to define the boundaries of BYOD that included the ability to segregate the business data and applications from personal data and applications. Mobile device management (MDM) provided the tools to control the device functionality and help manage the lifecycle of these mobile devices and their platforms. Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solutions added mobile application and content management. The ability to push software, updates, or patches to devices has become what is known as modern endpoint management.

Since then, work environments have continued to change. The range of endpoint device types has expanded past desktop, laptop, tablets, and mobile phone to now include printers, IoT devices, wearables like Apple Watch, and even newer types of endpoint devices that support virtual/augmented/mixed reality environments using headsets such as Oculus and HoloLens. Also expanded are the locations where these endpoints reside to just about anywhere in the world. Businesses are seeking to improve productivity and efficiency, while employees want to work from anywhere at any time. And with the more recent Covid-19 world we live in today, the requirement to work from home has become imperative, requiring mobile devices to access enterprise applications and data as if they were in the office.

Here are some Endpoint Management solution considerations that KuppingerCole sees in the market today:

• A focus on a more Unified Endpoint Management approach covering capabilities such as device, application, content management, endpoint security and intelligence, automation, compliance, reporting, etc.
• For enterprises looking to consolidate endpoint management across employees, datacenter and cloud, supporting a breadth of operating systems and device types is important.
• Visibility into the endpoints that the solutions manage like a single pane easy to understand user and administrative interface.
• Products that can address multiple deployment models such as on-premises, cloud, multi-cloud, and hybrid environments.

HCL BigFix is a well-established company based in Emeryville, California, with offices in Rome, Italy, Bangalore, India, and Krakow, Poland. It offers endpoint management through a suite of products, including Patch, Lifecycle, Compliance, Inventory, Insights, and Mobile capabilities.