iPad Mobile Device Management. Does It Work Yet?

[Gongalong]

Hi folks,

 

There's been a request at our school specifically for iPads, specifically for school purchases iPads used by subject departments.

 

We already have LearnPads from a year or two ago, specifically because of the management issue with iPads i.e. stopping students from messing them up.

 

Have things moved on at all wrt Mobile Device Management for iPads?

 

I've only found two options:

 

- Apple Configurator, which is apparently very poor, and can only run on OS X. Look at the review here by abillybob1994 https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/apple-configurator/id434433123?mt=12

- Meraki, which would mean replacing our wireless (a showstopper in itself), and apparently still isn't a great solution.

 

Is there anything else that actually works?

 

TIA

[LukeC]

You don't need to change your wireless to meraki. You can just use the MDM feature (systems manager)

https://meraki.cisco.com/products/systems-manager

 

We use a mixture of apple configurator and meraki, the student iPads are managed by apple configurator and sync and charge trolleys and probably once a term I hook them up to restore settings. You cant lock everything down but we have found the best way is to educate the staff and students and the correct usage. I use maraki to manage the staff iPads if we want to deploy apps over the air, which on the whole works fine but apps don't always install due to users not allowing it or not agreeing to new T&Cs issue by apple.

[Marshall_IT]

We use AirWatch and is fantastic, you can even create the iPads as shared devices and get users to log in with ad credentials which then determine which policies they get. I've not used this feature much as we have them 1to1 though.