Kit vendor Alcatel-Lucent has acquired mobile device management company Mformation with an eye to strengthening its Internet of Things and mobile security offerings.

A-Lu is claiming this move makes it the number one device management player with over 700 million devices. It’s also saying the acquisition provides a comprehensive, secure and cross-industry platform for IoT-optimized networks.

“As connected devices become an ever increasing part of our social and economic fabric, we need to ensure that these devices, and the networks they navigate, are secure, reliable and efficient,” said Bhaskar Gorti, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s IP Platforms. “Mformation’s cloud-enabled IoT platform will enable our customers to rapidly deploy IoT services that can be trusted and managed efficiently.”

“Our portfolio and our customer base are highly complementary to Alcatel-Lucent’s Internet of Things aspirations,” said Dr. Rakesh Kushwaha, Founder and CTO of Mformation. “We look forward to leveraging our mobile and IoT security capabilities to enable customers to fully exploit the benefits of a connected world.”

In a supplementary blog post, A-Lu indicated IoT security was the most important aspect of this acquisition.

“Why does that matter?” A-Lu blogged. “Because in the past 6 months alone more than 50 million Internet of Things (IoT) devices have been hacked or recalled. Security concerns are on the rise as networks become increasingly virtualized, wireless devices become mainstay components of complex machines, and unmanned connected devices begin to outnumber the world’s population tenfold.”

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