Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) Buyers' Guide 2024

State of the market: Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) solutions enable IT and security teams to monitor, manage, and secure all an organization’s endpoints—regardless of operating system or location—via a single interface.

The UEM market was valued at USD 5.5 billion in 2023 and is expected to register a CAGR of over 18.6% by 2032 to reach a market value of around USD 24.2 billion.
As remote work and BYOD policies become more popular, organizations are increasingly diversifying their device fleets with smartphones, tables, and IoT devices. These are complex to manage with traditional endpoint management systems.
UEM platforms offer a centralized approach to device management, making them much more efficient at managing diverse device types and operating systems than legacy EMM, MDM, and CMT tools.
“The trend around doing more with less is going to hold, the trend of hybrid work is going to hold, and the trend of security getting ever more complex is going hold. We believe strongly in the view that the more seamless you can build a solution set, the more integrated a solution set can be, then the easier and the lower cost it will be.”—Steve Dispensa, VP Of Product Management for Microsoft Intune.

In this guide, we’ll give you our top recommendations on how to choose the right UEM provider. We’ll also cover what features to look for in a UEM platform, the benefits and challenges of implementing UEM, and the future trends that you should keep tabs on within the endpoint management space.

Our Recommendations: Here are a few recommendations to bear in mind as you learn more about UEM, which will help you choose the right UEM tool for your business:

For large and growing enterprises: Choose a cloud-based solution that offers per-device pricing and can scale to support thousands of devices at once. This means you won’t have to change your plan or find a more scalable solution as your UEM requirements expand.
For small organizations: If you want to manage your UEM tool yourself, choose a cloud-based tool to help reduce the cost of installing on-prem hardware. We also recommend choosing a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) or IT Service Provider (ITSP) to manage the UEM tool for you.
For security-focused organizations: Choose a UEM tool that provides continuous monitoring, real-time alerts into security and compliance issues, and detailed audit logs.
For busy teams: Choose a solution that allows you to automate routine tasks such as device provisioning and patching. This will reduce the tool’s management overhead, freeing up your team’s time to work on more critical and creative tasks.

How UEM Works: UEM tools are usually deployed by installing a piece of software on all endpoints. This software then feeds back to a central management console, which admins can use to manage each endpoint through their entire lifecycle, including provisioning, configuration, monitoring, and decommissioning.

From the management console, UEM tools give you a unified view of all connected endpoints without you having to aggregate data from various on- and off-site device management tools (e.g., Mobile Device Management, Enterprise Mobility Management, and Client Management Tools). They may also offer features such as:

Device health and usage monitoring (inc. application usage)
Remote configuration options for device policies and peripheral settings
Patch management
Application deployment and management
User authentication and malware scanning, or integrations with other third-party security tools such as Unifies Endpoint Security (UES) and access management platforms

Benefits of UEM: There are three key use cases for implementing a UEM platform.

The first of these is improving operational efficiency.

You can use a UEM tool to automatically provision endpoints with the tools, applications, and security policies required by your organization.
You can automate routine management tasks, reducing the burden on your IT team.
By centralizing the management of all your endpoints, you save time that you may have previously spent aggregating data from multiple different device management tools.

The second is ensuring all endpoints are secured consistently against cyberthreats.

UEM tools continuously scan devices for potential vulnerabilities, then automatically update the device to the latest version or deploy the relevant software patch to prevent that vulnerability from being exploited.
By allowing you to approve or restrict the installation of specific applications across your users’ endpoints (e.g., with an app store), UEM tools protect your endpoints from malware and data leaks.
UEM tools allow you to configure policies for user authentication, password length and complexity, and encryption—unifying security policies across all devices.

The final use case is improving end user experience.

By monitoring device health and performance, checking their configurations, and keeping them updated, you can reduce downtime and disruptions.

Common UEM Challenges: Before you invest in a UEM solution, there are a few common challenges to be aware of. Here’s what they are, and how to solve them:

Consistent deployment: It can be complex to initially deploy a UEM solution, particularly in a large environment with hundreds or thousands of devices and a combination of on-prem, off-site, corporate-issued, and BYOD devices. To ensure you deploy the solution consistently and don’t miss any endpoints, we recommend tasking a small team with provisioning all devices with the UEM agent.
Device diversity: There are a huge number of different devices that can connect to the internet and access company data, all of which have different operating systems that will need managing. We recommend that before you start comparing UEM tools, you compile a list of all the different endpoint types currently in your organization. Then, choose a solution that supports all device and OS types to ensure maximum visibility.
Cost: As with most types of cybersecurity solution, implementing and maintaining a UEM solution can be costly. We recommend choosing a vendor that offers per endpoint pricing and allows you to scale up as your business grows.
Complexity of management: Ongoing management can be resource-intensive if you have a large or diverse device fleet. We recommend using your UEM tool to automate as many routine tasks as possible, such as software updates and patching. Smaller organizations may wish to consider investing in UEM via an MSP, MSSP, or ITSP, who can manage the solution—and your endpoints—for you.

Best UEM Providers: Our team of cybersecurity analysts and researchers has put together a shortlist of the best providers of UEM solutions, as well as adjacent lists covering similar topics:

Features Checklist: When comparing UEM solutions, Expert Insights recommends looking for the following features:

Multi-platform support: The solution must be compatible with all different endpoints (e.g., PCs, laptops, mobile devices) and operating systems (e.g., Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, Android) in your organization.
Real-time monitoring and alerts: It should continuously monitor devices and alert you immediately to any security or compliance issues.
Device onboarding/deprovisioning: You should be able to remotely provision endpoints with necessary tools and applications, then decommission them when they’re no longer in use to help prevent data loss. In the same vein, you may want to look for remote wipe/lock capabilities in the event a device is breached or stolen.
Patch management: The solution should remotely and automatically deploy updates and patches to protect against vulnerabilities.
Application controls: You should be able to define policies that restrict or grant access to specific applications.
Remote management and troubleshooting: You should be able to manage and troubleshoot devices remotely. Some solutions offer full remote control for seamless troubleshooting.
Integration: The solution must be compatible with your existing IT infrastructure and security tools (e.g., SIEM).

Future Trends: There are three main trends that we expect to see play out in the UEM space in the near future.

First is the convergence with UEM and endpoint security. There are a lot of similarities between UEM, Unified Endpoint Security (UES), endpoint security, and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tools. As IT and security teams increasingly call out for simplified IT management and a more unified security stack, we can expect the future to hold an “all-in-one” version of these tools.

Second, with the rapid pace of development in AI and machine learning, we can expect UEM providers to enhance their capabilities for real-time threat/compliance issue detection and automated management.

Third, as more organizations embrace a zero-trust architecture, we can expect UEM tools to enable admins to configure zero trust policies to continuously authenticate each endpoint.

We can expect each of these trends to play out over the next few years. However, there’s one more evolution that we expect to take place in the UEM space that will take a little longer to come to fruition, namely increased support for IoT devices.

Tech providers are starting to release more virtual reality and augmented reality devices that, if embraced in the workplace, will need to be managed and secured.
UEM providers will need to expand their capabilities to provide support for these devices—though with these technologies still being very new, we don’t expect to see great demand for this within the next five years.

Further Reading: You can find all of our articles on UEM in our Endpoint Management Hub.

Want to get straight into it? Here are a few articles that we think you’ll like:

Shortlist: The Top 10 Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) Solutions
Interview: How SMEs Can Build A Winning Strategy For Identity And Device Management
Interview: Microsoft VP Talks Tightening Security Budgets, Product Management, And The New Intune Suite
Blog: RMM Vs. UEM: What’s The Difference?

Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) Buyers’ Guide 2024

How to choose the right Unified Endpoint Management software.