Nemertes Impact Analysis:

Viewfinity (privately held), releasing v 2.5 of their cloud-based desktop and privilege management suites, highlights both the continuing pain of enterprise desktop management and the promise of SaaS for management. The main problem in desktop management: the conflicting demands of security and flexibility. Security demands constant software updates and desktop lock-down; flexibility demands user control of the machine. More than 60% of Nemertes’ benchmark participants use SaaS, and Viewfinity hopes to harness that willingness to help IT resolve the security/flexibility conflict, by enabling software, asset, and user-rights management in a SaaS model.

Impacts:

Enterprises: If increasing user mobility or branches splintering into smaller branches impedes good desktop management, examine SaaS-based desktop management suites.

Vendors: Desktop management vendors, cloud-based delivery can improve distributed- and mobile-workforce management -- you should have a strategy for it.

Investors: Viewfinity, and other small, privately held desktop management SaaS vendors including Everdream, Paragent, and Unidesk, might be attractive acquisition targets for big management vendors including HP (NYSE:HPQ), Symantec (NASDAQ:SYMC), Emerson (NYSE:EMR), and IBM (NYSE:IBM).

John E. Burke, Principal Research Analyst

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