Enterprise Mobile announced a hosted management service today for smartphones in the enterprise (built on MobileIron).  http://bit.ly/ag8Y7u

There are a couple of interesting forces at work here.  Gartner published research last December predicting “by 2012, 20% of businesses will own no IT assets.” The hypothesis is that the confluence of cloud computing, business process outsourcing, and the movement of smartphone/laptop ownership to end-users will result in a radically different IT model for a fifth of the business population.  That’s actually staggering in its implications – IT teams get smaller, cap ex shrinks, custom development becomes obsolete, and end-user support models are truly virtual.  It feels like smartphones are going to be at the front end of this shift.

Last year, IT departments spent a lot of time improving efficiency so they could continue to provide quality services in spite of shrinking budgets.  The rapid adoption of smartphones during that time was great for end-users but in some ways the worse possible thing for IT, which now had to deal with a whole new raft of security, cost, and usability issues without any additional resources to throw at it.

That’s why I think the Enterprise Mobile announcement is really interesting.  There is huge variability across enterprises in both capabilities and mindset for managing smartphones.  Some want it on-premise, some want to outsource it.  Some want just email, some want apps. But they all want choice because the smartphone market is moving far too fast to be predictable.