iPad deployment and management

[Wubbalubbadub]

Evening all. I just want to ask the question. Does anyone know of a system that just manages iPad. I'm talking to the point where I can virtually write them off my to do list.

 

Currently we have one of the techs who deals with them. But he's handed in his notice and unless I can get a new tech soon then it's coming my way to do

 

Managed iPads

 

Little if nothing from me.

 

Ideal.

 

Posted via iPad

[Sam_Brown]

Hate to answer a question with a question but what exactly do you want the "solution" to manage?

 

There are a few things out there to manage iPads but depending on exactly what you want to do is going to determine on how complicated it's going to get.

 

Apple Configurator on a mac will enable you to initially set up the iPads and you can use it to pre-populate them with apps.

 

Then after that depending on how many devices you have you're either going to be going round updating them individually with new apps \ settings etc as they are needed which could be time consuming or you'll want to use an MDM (mobile device management) to manage them all remotely. There are a fair few MDM solutions out there ranging from free to expensive and it's all going to depend on exactly what you want to achieve. Two off the top of my head are meraki which used to be free (probably still is) and lightspeed which costs money but seems to have more functionality.

[Wubbalubbadub]

Well at the moment we are using light speed... However from what little the tech has told me about since I. Started its not exactly "non touch" when deploying apps to the iPads using the MDM (light speed) he still hasn't to then run up after the iPad and put the password in...

 

In which case we may as well save money and just walk up there and do it ourselves...

 

I want an MDM where I literally just type the name of the user. And tell it to deploy an app and boom off it goes...

 

It's retry late and there's a pretty empty bottle of red in front of me so forgive me if this makes little sense.

[Progress]

Hi, Meraki is very good to try.. Still free, for the moment anyway, works with Apple and Android and you can pick individual machines to send apps to. You will need an Apple push certificate, but can get one easy enough through the Meraki setup process, monitoring is excellent...

Lightspeed is a good long term bet, especially if you get your broadband from Schools Broadband who do a decent package, and did have a trial period.

Hope that helps!

Edited January 12, 2015 by Progress

[Wubbalubbadub]

Hi, Meraki is very good to try.. Still free, for the moment anyway, works with Apple and Android and you can pick individual machines to send apps to. You will need an Apple push certificate, but can get one easy enough through the Meraki setup process, monitoring is excellent...

Lightspeed is a good long term bet, especially if you get your broadband from Schools Broadband who do a decent package, and did have a trial period.

Hope that helps!

 

Thanks ill do some research. I suspect that I will just be putting up with the crap iv got.