Ivanti has completed its acquisition of MobileIron and Pulse Secure. Ivanti, headquartered in Salt Lake City, had its roots in desktop management (LANDESK), evolved into endpoint and patch management, and had added full IT asset, service, and workspace management, as well as IAM capabilities.

Though headquartered in North America, Ivanti had already become a global IT solutions provider. Pulse Secure, a strong secure access vendor, was spun-out from Juniper Networks in 2014. MobileIron was dedicated to mobile device management, mobile security, and authentication since it was established in 2009. Both Pulse Secure and MobileIron are global companies, with strong partner networks in both NA and the EU. Both had sizable shares of their market segments, including many enterprise customers.

Deal merges Zero Trust capabilities

This pair of acquisitions will result in a merger of capabilities that are central to the Zero Trust paradigm that prevails in IAM and cybersecurity today. Zero Trust, at its base, is granular authentication and contextual authorization for every request in an environment, whether on-premises, in the cloud, or hybrid, with runtime evaluation of user/device/app/data attributes against access control policies. It is the embodiment of the principle of least privilege.

These acquisitions bring together UEM and device security, VPN and ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access), and strong MFA. Each of these functions is essential for moving to a true ZTNA. Moreover, with the increased need for long term remote working and partnerships, consolidating secure mobile authentication and access control with VPN and comprehensive UEM will be a benefit to current customers. It will present an appealing alternative to additional enterprise and SMB prospects that are looking to improve security posture and user experiences.

No single product achieves 100% Zero Trust

While no single product or suite can make an organization fully “Zero Trust”, the move by Ivanti to pick up MobileIron and Pulse Secure should make it easier for this combination to satisfy larger subsets of business and security requirements related to Zero Trust.

Each company’s products have strengths that complement the others. There are some overlaps in their product offerings, and as usual in such situations, there will likely be some de-duplication of functions in their solution roadmaps. KuppingerCole has reported on these vendors previously and will follow upcoming developments in this space.