Acquisition accelerates DMI growth plan

Digital Management Inc. has made a deal to buy a company that provides mobile device management as a managed service.

The deal for Mission Critical Wireless LLC comes as mobile computing heats up in the government and commercial market places, particular as more worker use their personal mobile devices to do agency or company work, the so-called bring your own device trend.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

DMI, part of Washington Technology 2012 Fast 50, has been helping agencies figure out their mobile device strategies by offering consulting, application development and integration services, said

“This company brings us the managed services aspect,” said Sunny Bajaj, DMI founder and CEO.

With Mission Critical Wireless on board, DMI will be able to offer an enterprise-wide mobile management solution, he said. Mission Critical Wireless is primarily in the commercial market, counting members of the Fortune 100 as its clients.

“This is a great opportunity for us to expand and grow their business and to offer a complete lifecycle solution to our federal clients,” Bajaj said.

A managed services offering is important because the use of mobile devices is growing so rapidly that federal and commercial organization need support with how to manage devices and with keeping pace with the technology. If they can’t afford to build the expertise in-house, they can hire a service to manage the devices for them, he said.

Managed services for mobile devices are being embraced in the commercial market, but federal agencies will begin to catch up, Bajaj said.

It is not unusual for a commercial client to outsource management of thousands of devices, he said. “Overtime we’ll see that in the federal sector as well.”

Mission Critical Wireless will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of DMI, Bajaj said.

He is hoping the acquisition establishes DMI as a leader in the mobile device management space because the company is taking an enterprise-wide approach, he said.

“There are a lot of point solutions out there. There are companies that simply do app development or mobile strategy, but we wanted to take a holistic view and provide an end-to-end solution,” Bajaj said. “We want to be the visionaries and the solutions provider for the next great thing.”

The acquisition is not an attempt to hedge DMI’s bets in the government market, where budgets are contracting, he said.

The government is looking for ways to do more with less, and mobility provides ways to do that such as increasing productivity, Bajaj said.

“This administration also has a digital strategy in place with a heavy emphasis on mobility,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll see that emphasis go away.”