Enterprise mobility 2025: Automation lightens the load

Enterprise mobility today is basically synonymous with unified endpoint management (UEM) software, which unifies and centralizes the management of phones, tablets, PCs, and other devices. UEM grew out of earlier mobile management tools in the late teens and came to prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic when office workers worldwide shifted to remote work.

Now a well-established product category, UEM platforms have continued to broaden their scope and introduce new features. Here are the most important trends to know about in 2025.

Early days for genAI in UEM

With all the hype around artificial intelligence (AI) and particularly generative AI (genAI) over the past few years, you’d be forgiven for expecting these tools to be taking over UEM platforms. But we’re not quite there yet.

“At this time, AI and genAI implementation into UEM platforms is limited, and vendor marketing claims often exceed product capabilities,” says Tom Cipolla, senior director and analyst at research firm Gartner.

Among the areas where AI and genAI could enhance UEM, Cipolla says, are genAI-infused chatbots to simplify product usage, AI-generated actionable insights to improve endpoint management and digital employee experience (DEX), and improved script generation through genAI.

But for the most part, none of this is happening yet. “Gartner clients report limited usage of current genAI features,” Cipolla says.

“Overall, it’s still early days” for genAI in UEM, says Andrew Hewitt, principal analyst at research firm Forrester. “The most advanced use cases today are the ones for anomaly detection — in other words, being able to look at historical data and point out outliers that indicate an experience or security issue.”

The use cases around genAI, such as natural-language querying of estate data and end-user self-service, “are still pretty immature,” Hewitt says. “Most of the offerings are new here, and it will take time for them to develop into full-fledged offerings.”

[ Free download: UEM vendor comparison chart 2025 ]

Key UEM trends

A bigger focus in the UEM market these days is on automation tools to boost task efficiency.

“Throughout our numerous conversations with Gartner clients, they all need to increase the speed of typical endpoint management tasks,” Cipolla says. “Complicating this is the fact that they must also reduce the operational labor required for endpoint management.”

In response, they are leveraging UEM intelligent automation capabilities such as automatic policy standard enforcement and autonomous endpoint management (AEM), a next-generation capability that is enabled by new functionality within advanced endpoint management tools, Cipolla says.

“AEM leverages configuration, compliance, risk, performance, and experience data to intelligently perform common endpoint management and DEX tasks,” Cipolla says. “The first foundational use case for AEM is autonomous patching that accelerates patch deployment and compliance and reduces IT overhead and degradation of digital employee experience.”

UEM vendors are continuing to modernize their endpoint management approaches “by embracing the latest and greatest [management tools] of the OS vendors, such as Apple Declarative Device Management (DDM) and Android Management API (AMAPI),” Hewitt says. “We will continue to see vendors innovate here and build additional customizations on top of these native capabilities.” 

Another key trend is the ongoing focus on the data collected by UEMs. “This is the biggest transformation that’s happened in UEM since the rise of modern Windows management, and it’s a consistent trend from last year,” Hewitt says. “Nearly every vendor is leveraging some form of data, whether real-time or event-driven, to better support automation, DEX, and security use cases. Expect this to continue for the next three years.”

As a result of the trend around data — and despite the slow uptick of genAI — nearly every vendor is focusing on building more AI into their platforms, Hewitt says. “Expect to see more ML [machine learning]-based anomaly detection, suggested remediations and configuration setups, and generative AI for user support,” he says.

Many UEM platforms are starting to offer tools that allow for natural-language querying of the platforms, to extract data and information via chatbots, and so on, says Phil Hochmuth, program vice president, enterprise mobility, at research firm IDC.

Some are developing advanced automation features that allow AI to scan for endpoint vulnerabilities and suggest or automatically apply patches or other remediations, Hochmuth says.

UEM providers are also looking to strengthen the cybersecurity capabilities of their platforms.

“We continue to see vendors investing in bringing more endpoint security capabilities into their stack,” Hewitt says. “This has focused primarily around vulnerability management, either natively or through third parties.”

Market moves and outlook

The most notable vendor transaction over the past year, Cipolla says, was the sale of VMware to Broadcom and the subsequent spinoff and sale of VMware’s end-user computing (EUC) portfolio, including its UEM platform, to KKR. The spun-off EUC unit became an independent company rebranded as Omnissa.

With the sale now complete, “Omnissa now sets its own direction and product strategy while also providing the capability for customers to maintain established bundled contracts with non-EUC Broadcom products through a partnership reseller agreement,” Cipolla says.

So far the new provider has been “pretty well-received as a standalone vendor, but competitors are making a play to draw away customers who might be questioning the new vendor going forward,” Hochmuth says.

Forrester has “not seen mass moves away from VMware now that they are the independent Omnissa,” Hewitt says. “We expect Omnissa to accelerate its momentum after a year of big changes. Most UEM customers are optimistic about the future of Omnissa given its independence from VMware and Broadcom.”

Pricing of UEM platforms has remained relatively stable, outside of nominal increases as a result of global inflation, Cipolla says. “Many vendors have simplified their licensing models by creating bundled tiers,” he says.

Hochmuth, on the other hand, says prices might actually be declining on an application service provider (ASP) level for basic UEM/mobile device management (MDM) functions. “However, vendors are having success charging for premium features, such as AI-based automation, end-user analytics, and digital employee experience features and modules,” he says.

The market is clearly getting more competitive. “There are number of vendors looking to enter the UEM market, mainly from the RMM [remote monitoring and management]/endpoint patching space,” Hochmuth says. “These include NinjaOne, Automox, and to some extent, Tanium.”

Despite the UEM market being very mature with a few vendors holding significant market share, Gartner has observed an increase in the number of operating system-specific endpoint management tools that can be used alongside comprehensive UEM platforms for specific use cases including discovery and OS and third-party application patching, Cipolla says. Among the vendors offering these tools are Adaptiva, Automox, Jamf, NinjaOne, and Tanium.

“These tools address feature gaps and augment and accelerate device management,” Cipolla says. “Gartner predicts that this trend will continue until mainstream UEM tools fully address these needs, resulting in a new growth opportunity for endpoint management vendors to compete with mainstream established UEM tools.”

[ Free download: UEM vendor comparison chart 2025 ]

Related: See how mobility management has evolved over the past decade