Ivanti Blog: Posts by

Acquisition with Intent and The Rise of The Everywhere Workplace: Why Ivanti Is Moving Faster Than Ever During a Global Pandemic

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 15:00:45 Z

It's easy for businesses to drop into reactive survival mode during a crisis like COVID-19. Navigating rapidly changing conditions can make it difficult to think beyond immediate challenges. And yet, even – or perhaps especially – in a crisis, it’s imperative that companies execute strategies that will make them stronger in the long term. In the case of COVID-19, those strategies should support clients as they transition to new working conditions.

This pandemic has catalyzed a monumental shift in where and how people work. It’s becoming increasingly clear that this shift won’t end with the pandemic. At Ivanti, we’ve spent years preparing for what we call the “Everywhere Workplace,” in which IT infrastructures and customers are everywhere, and distributed employees need access to apps and data from any device, whenever and wherever they work. We’re creating the end-to-end solutions that support this new work landscape, making it simpler and more secure for employees to deliver peak performance from wherever they are.

In the midst of this crisis, we’ve accelerated a transformative acquisition strategy to bring the Everywhere Workplace to life. Our goal: identify the best talent, solutions, technologies, and innovations, and bring them into Ivanti. We have the distinct advantage of being able to augment sourced technologies with our own in-house innovations, such as the Ivanti Neurons intelligent experience platform, in order to reduce IT complexity and improve the experience for our clients and end users.

Acquisition with intent

There are two kinds of acquisitive companies in the tech space: consolidators and integrators. Consolidators are effectively holding companies that keep their acquisitions running independently. Integrators acquire with intent, forging a strategic path that targets and serves a consistent customer demographic. This creates a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. Ivanti is an integrator.

Formed from the merger of HEAT Software and LANDESK – both providers of IT service management and endpoint management solutions – in 2017, we have been busy building out a best-of-breed unified IT management portfolio ever since.

Today, Ivanti is focused on three product pillars: unified endpoint management (UEM), zero trust security, and enterprise service management (ESM). Our recent acquisitions have all supported this vision.

We acquired MobileIron and Pulse Secure at the height of the pandemic. With MobileIron, we had already integrated our desktop and endpoint management products as part of an ongoing agreement, and the acquisition expanded our endpoint management capabilities to handle any endpoint device. With Pulse Secure, which already had a multi-year partnership with MobileIron, we were able to build out our security offerings.

And now, we’re building out our ESM pillar with the acquisition of Cherwell. Cherwell is an IT service management company that enables its clients to deploy line-of-business applications without writing code so they can deliver enterprise services more quickly, tailored to their own workflows.

A unified approach to enterprise IT

We add value to our acquisitions through a combination of integration and product innovation. This enables us to integrate all our solutions into our Ivanti Neurons platform.

Using our latest acquisition as an example, we are committed to maintaining and investing in both Cherwell and Ivanti service management solutions while working to converge the best aspects of each. We plan to integrate Cherwell’s market-leading no-code and low-code applications. The Ivanti Neurons platform will connect the best-of-both enterprise service management portfolio with the company’s unified endpoint management and zero trust security solutions, providing a single pane of glass for enterprises to proactively, predictably and autonomously self-heal and self-secure devices, and self-service end users.

On their own, each of our three pillars are well-established and mature industry sectors that invite market consolidation. However, a smart acquisition strategy that builds an end-to-end solution unified by a smart automation layer adds exponential value. While other companies compete with Ivanti in single pillars, no other vendor offers this unified approach to IT management from the endpoint through to back-office IT and enterprise service management.

Ivanti's platform enables companies to discover, manage, secure and service all endpoints and IT assets. This is what makes the Everywhere Workplace possible. With a platform that can find and protect every device, and provide proactive IT support for end users, we’re create a working environment that supports employees equally well at the office, at home, or on the road. Our platform understands and accommodates each employee's working context.

Thinking beyond adversity

Those who invest in innovation and technology during a crisis emerge stronger. PwC's 2020 Executive Pulse survey bears this out; 75% of the executives surveyed said that they were committing more resources to digital transformation during the crisis.

A key part of digital transformation is determining which technologies support long-term competitive advantage. When the pandemic sharpened the need for a workplace strategy and we saw companies struggling to support employees working from home, we doubled down on the Everywhere Workplace with acquisitions that would make life simpler alongside protecting remote users.

Combining technologies is just one challenge for a company that is growing through integrative acquisitions. The other part is cultural integration. People, relationships, and working practices vary widely across companies, and each is unique. When Ivanti acquires a company, we immerse it in our own management style as quickly as possible.

We use a flat management structure that encourages fast, efficient communication and execution. We put the customer first and are heavily performance-oriented, focusing on financial discipline. We aren’t just a bunch of pieces and parts, but rather a unified, strengthened and robust whole.

We will continue to build, buy and partner to get into product subcategories that make sense for our business, and we already see more opportunities that present a good fit. It’s not all about building scale; it’s about building a deeper and more vertically oriented solution set. We are already set to emerge from the pandemic stronger, with a cohesive offering that will make our clients stronger too. It's going to be a brave new world, and we are ready to serve.

Ivanti will Acquire Cherwell to Further Enable the Everywhere Workplace

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 12:31:08 Z

I am excited to share the news that Ivanti has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Cherwell Software, a global leader in enterprise service management (ESM) solutions. This comes on the heels of Ivanti being named a Leader in Gartner’s 2020 Magic Quadrant for IT Service Management Tools report.

The agreement to acquire Cherwell should be yet another signal to the market that we’re serious about our mission to bring the best solutions into the Ivanti platform to further enable the everywhere workplace. Subject to regulatory approvals, the business combination of Cherwell and Ivanti will further solidify Ivanti’s status as a global leader in ESM. By bringing these solutions together, we will expand the reach of our Neurons hyper-automation platform to more customers, providing end-to-end service and asset management from IT to line of business and from every endpoint to the IoT edge.

Enabling the Everywhere Workplace

Ivanti’s proposed acquisition of Cherwell reflects the urgency customers have for modern and scalable ESM solutions that deliver better user experiences and business outcomes. In today’s digital world, the expectations of employees have shifted. Workers now require immediate and personalized resolutions for IT issues impacting their ability to remain productive – regardless of where they are working from or what devices they are using.

As a result, companies across all industries need to automate their service desk operations and deliver user experiences that are contextual, personalized, and anticipatory. Service desks need greater visibility, in real time, to actionable information across their devices, infrastructure and users to improve the accuracy, speed and efficiency of services delivered.

Over the past year, we’ve released several notable enhancements to our ESM product portfolio, leveraging Ivanti Neurons, to make life easier for service desk teams and help them to detect and resolve service issues proactively, predictably, and autonomously. Together with Cherwell, we will build a deeper and more vertically oriented solution that will enable end-to-end service and asset management from IT to lines of business and from every endpoint to the IoT edge.

We will continue to maintain and invest in both Cherwell and Ivanti offerings, while working to converge the best aspects of each solution. Our goal is to deliver a single leading IT management solution that provides hyper-automated, ambient, and secure experiences that all of our customers can benefit from.

Maximizing Business Outcomes and Driving Innovation Through Hyper-Automation

To maximize our customers' business outcomes, Neurons, our hyper-automation platform, will act as the glue that transitions us from point-level solutions to an integrated platform that provides a single pane of glass for enterprises to proactively, predictably and autonomously self-heal and self-secure devices, and self-service end users.

Leveraging Neurons, enterprises will be able to discover, manage, secure, and service all devices in the everywhere workplace from cloud to edge; implement secure zero trust access; and deliver personalized, contextual user experiences – improving operational speed, cost, and accuracy of service.

Our hyper-automation platform will empower organizations to secure connections on every device, for any user, wherever and however they work. This will enable our customers to collaborate and innovate more freely, while reducing the risk of data breaches and enhancing employee experiences.

I am looking forward to welcoming the Cherwell team into the Ivanti family, and proud that, with this proposed combination, we are building a powerful business that will drive immense value for customers, employees, and investors alike. We have a tremendous opportunity ahead of us, and I’m very excited for the future.

To learn more, please check out the press release here.

A New Year and a New Ivanti

Thu, 31 Dec 2020 15:22:12 Z

2020. A year that will never be forgotten and one that has had everlasting impacts on business operations, how we work, and our daily lives. As I reflect on this past year, I realize that 2020 has been the longest test for us all. 365 days long. It’s been the year of rapid change, one where adopting innovative adaptability is critical. I have been thinking about my New Year’s resolution and discovered that 2021 is the year when we make a collective resolution.

The New Year will bring the New Ivanti and here’s what we will strive to succeed.

On December 1st, 2020, we closed the acquisitions of MobileIron and Pulse Secure. As part of our 2021 New Year’s resolution, we are expanding our capabilities in order to deliver intelligent and secure experiences across remote infrastructure, devices, and people in what we call the “everywhere enterprise.”

The future of work is no longer a future, it is happening now. At Ivanti, we are committed to enabling our current and future customers to proactively and autonomously self-heal, self-secure, and self-service devices because we know that cybersecurity is more important than ever. Security must be and will be our priority in 2021.

We are ready to empower enterprises across the globe, with their new distributed and hybrid workforces, to accelerate their adoption of zero trust security frameworks with intelligent contextual automation. Next year is a year of making IT connections smarter and more secure across remote infrastructure, devices, and people.

Most important is our resolution to continue and keep an exceptional user experience front and center. The first step in achieving this was completing the acquisitions on December 1st. In order to deliver a seamless, secure, and personalized user experience across all devices in the everywhere enterprise, we will integrate and unify the technologies and products across Ivanti, MobileIron, and Pulse Secure. We are already far travelled on this road to integration and we cannot wait to share new features with you all in 2021.

The New Ivanti is bigger and better than ever before. This is more than a New Year’s resolution, it’s our commitment to the everywhere enterprise, to our partners, and our customers.

Have a safe and happy New Year!

Ivanti Acquires MobileIron and Pulse Secure to Accelerate Our Vision for the Everywhere Enterprise

Tue, 01 Dec 2020 14:30:00 Z

I am excited to share the news that Ivanti has closed the acquisitions of MobileIron, a leading provider of mobile-centric Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) solutions, and Pulse Secure, a leading provider of secure access and mobile security solutions.

By bringing MobileIron and Pulse Secure into the Ivanti portfolio, we will expand our capabilities to include even more devices, embed greater security protocols across infrastructures, and allow organizations to proactively and autonomously self-heal, self-secure, and self-service devices. This business combination further solidifies Ivanti as a global market leader in UEM, Zero Trust Security, and IT Service Management (ITSM), and positions us to deliver intelligent and secure experiences across remote infrastructure, devices, and people in what we call the “everywhere enterprise.”

The everywhere enterprise has been called the “new normal” or the “future of work.” The reality is that it is not the future; it is now. The everywhere enterprise is very much the workplace of today, in which IT infrastructures and customers are everywhere, and distributed employees must be able to access apps and data from any device, whenever and wherever they work. These remote mobile work environments demand a new approach to security architectures – making cybersecurity more important today than ever before.

According to Interpol, in just the first quarter since the coronavirus pandemic began, there was a 273% increase in data breaches Significantly, the primary targets of these attacks are the private sector and governments, not individuals. The new distributed workforce, myriad devices, and data flowing freely from cloud to apps require a zero trust security approach based on a “never trust, always verify” framework. By combining Pulse Secure and MobileIron’s zero trust security capabilities with the intelligent contextual automation in Ivanti’s platform, we will make IT connections smarter and more secure across remote infrastructure, devices, and people. In this way, Ivanti is uniquely positioned to provide the most comprehensive level of end-to-end coverage on every device.

Putting the User Experience Front and Center

While adding comprehensive security capabilities to our platform through the acquisitions, our priority, as always, is to ensure an exceptional user experience. We will accomplish this by integrating and unifying the best of the three companies’ technologies and products in order to deliver a seamless, secure, and personalized user experience across all devices in the everywhere enterprise.

At the center of this transformation – moving us from point-level solutions to a truly integrated platform – will be Ivanti’s unique Neurons intelligent experience platform, which can detect devices, understand user preferences, optimize device performance, minimize configuration drift, and predict and resolve security vulnerabilities. The resulting solutions will deliver a uniform experience across all devices and will empower enterprises to proactively, predictably, and autonomously self-heal and self-secure devices, while simultaneously self-servicing end users. Leveraging Ivanti Neurons as our core platform will also enable us to integrate MobileIron and Pulse Secure technologies with our service desk software solution, allowing us to satisfy customers’ urgent need to provide IT services for remote workers that are both contextual and personalized and that anticipate their needs

The great news is that we are already well down the road of integration with Ivanti and MobileIron UEM solutions. And we’re looking forward to sharing the new features that will roll out to our customers with the combined solutions.

Powering Business Through Hyper-Automation

Looking ahead, the Ivanti Neurons platform will power business through hyper-automation and secure connections on every device and for any user, wherever and however they work. Through hyper-automation, customers will benefit from real-time intelligence into the health, security, and performance of all devices from cloud to edge, enabling them to proactively detect and remediate vulnerabilities before they impact the business. Customers will also be able to discover and manage devices, implement secure zero trust access with contextual automation, and deliver personalized employee experiences – not only improving productivity, but increasing operational speed, reducing costs, and enhancing quality of service. In short, hyper-automation will ensure a productive and satisfied workforce by enabling our customers to collaborate and innovate more freely, while reducing the risk of data breaches and enhancing employee experiences.

Driving Growth for Investors, Employees, and Customers

I am delighted to welcome the MobileIron and Pulse Secure teams into the Ivanti family and proud that Ivanti is building a bigger and deeper business that will drive immense value for investors, employees, and customers alike. The combination of our UEM, zero trust security, and ITSM solutions fills a need that is critical to the success of the everywhere enterprise, enabling organizations to greatly accelerate and secure their digital workplaces. We have a tremendous opportunity ahead of us, and I’m very excited for the future. To learn more, please check out the press release here.