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Siemens Enterprise Communications Partners with AirWatch to Address BYOD

In a move to help its customers address the BYOD trend, Siemens Enterprise Communications (News - Alert) today announced a referral program with mobility management outfit AirWatch. If the partnership is successful, the company is likely to forge a tighter relationship with AirWatch, Randy Roberts, SEC’s (News - Alert) vice president of mobility portfolio management, told TMCnet.

The current partnership has AirWatch providing its portfolio to Siemens Enterprise Communications customers via a referral program to SEC’s agent channel. Roberts described this effort as “a first step of many to come” to bring mobility management further into the company’s portfolio.

Siemens (News - Alert) Enterprise Communications’ enterprise customers clearly a have need for management solutions related to mobile devices, content and security, said Roberts. When the company polled its customers and analysts on how it might best address this important trend, they suggested SEC partner with one of the many existing mobility management companies in what Roberts noted is a “fragmented market”.  

The company chose AirWatch (News - Alert) as its partner given it has global reach; good product feature breadth, addressing application management, content management, device management, e-mail management, and security; and a strong cloud offer, in addition to an on-premises option.

This first step relationship with AirWatch is expected to benefit SEC customers seeking BYOD solutions, and will help education SEC’s channel on mobility management solutions and how to sell them, said Roberts.

Potential next steps with AirWatch might include SEC creating a reseller program with AirWatch, and/or doing integration between AirWatch products and the Enterasys identity access management solution and/or the SEC network element provisioning tool (which today is used for fixed network elements), Roberts said. When asked whether SEC has plans to acquire or take an equity stake in AirWatch, Roberts responded: “It’s way, way too early to say anything like that.”

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