Jamf and Airwatch MDMs

[lfowler]

Hi All,We are currently reviewing our MDMs with an aim to reduce overhead and bring 3 systems down into 2.

 

Currently, we run a mix of Apple’s Profile manager for our Macs and AppleTVs, Lightspeed MDM for our iPads and Mobile Iron (Provided by our phone network EE) for our iPhones… and it’s a Little bit of a mess and REALLY needs to be consolidated and re-organised.We have whittled down lots of options and obtained pricing for our shortlisted options. Ultimately, we have made our decision but I just wanted to get a feeler for what the community opinions / reviews on Airwatch and Jamf Pro (Was Casper).

 

We are planning on using Jamf for all our Apple Devices (iPad, iPod Touch, Mac, Apple TV and iPhone via the Device Enrolment Program), and Airwatch for our small fleet of Android PhonesI am ideally looking for those schools using these systems or with past experiences of the systems so we get an idea of what we are getting ourselves into.Any comments gratefully received including Support Experiences, Updates, Features, installation, Management etc.

 

Thanks in advance!

Edited April 3, 2019 by lfowler

[steveg]

We use Airwatch as our mdm for ipads, and have done for a few years now. Generally I've found it to be very good, and their support has always been good. I haven't used another mdm solution, so can't offer a comparison.

 

The only thing with Airwatch that is really useless is their sales team - our current subscription ran out in October last year, and we've ended up going through a reseller and still haven't actually paid for it yet!

 

Steve

[RLR]

We've been using Jamf Pro for 7 years now to manage our IOS and MacOS devices. Most MDMs will do the same thing but some only support IOS devices. Jamf will do MacOS, TVOS and IOS and they always provide 0 day support for new releases. They also have decent support that is very helpful and an active community forum: jamfnation.

[DalekSec]

We use Mosyle, Jamf cost the same amount as a small house!

 

Mosyle does everything we need, iOS, macOS and tvOS (not that we use that part!). Can't see what else you would need from an education point of view that Mosyle doesn't do. I trialled Jamf and it does do a lot more but mainly nice to haves and not things we really needed.

[lfowler]

@steveg We have found that their sales team are slow as well, we chased them for a quote and ended up going through Albion who got a quote to us on the day we contacted them.

[steve]

Hijack - What sort of price are people paying for Apple MDMs - for both ipads and laptops

[RLR]

For Jamf we paid around £6.50 per new IOS license, £5.50 for renewing IOS licenses we already had, and £13 for MacOS license. This is Jamf Pro in the cloud.

[DalekSec]

Mosyle is $5.50 (£4.20) per device be it iOS or macOS (tvOS is free)

[Brimstone]

Whilst there are hundreds of MDM's that can manage iOS devices, for macOS the only choice should really be Jamf..

 

Why? Jamf has features for macOS that many other MDM's just can not do..

 

Have Azure AD? Jamf can integrate with this to create user accounts in macOS that can sync with Azure AD, you don't even need a local account on the Mac.

Use InTune for identity? Jamf works with this to integrate management, MS use this themselves

Need to create pkg's or dmg's Jamf Pro for macOS has the tools

[DalekSec]

Whilst there are hundreds of MDM's that can manage iOS devices, for macOS the only choice should really be Jamf..

 

Why? Jamf has features for macOS that many other MDM's just can not do..

 

Have Azure AD? Jamf can integrate with this to create user accounts in macOS that can sync with Azure AD, you don't even need a local account on the Mac.

Use InTune for identity? Jamf works with this to integrate management, MS use this themselves

Need to create pkg's or dmg's Jamf Pro for macOS has the tools

 

Agreed Jamf is the best for large deployments, we only have the 9 Macs! (30+ iPads) So Mosyle does everything we need

[jgmitchell]

We are moving away from Profile manager and going to Mosyle.

 

We wanted JAMF but we had to pay for a compulsory "jumpstart" which was £5.6k. All of which was simple set up tasks that we could easily do.

....We did not proceed with the order.

[steve]

Agreed Jamf is the best for large deployments, we only have the 9 Macs! (30+ iPads) So Mosyle does everything we need

 

Macs are only about 10% of our estate.....so just about 2000 apples, excluding iPads

[Brimstone]

We are moving away from Profile manager and going to Mosyle.

 

We wanted JAMF but we had to pay for a compulsory "jumpstart" which was £5.6k. All of which was simple set up tasks that we could easily do.

....We did not proceed with the order.

 

If that's for iOS only that is extortionate.....you should be quoted under £600.00 for that alone...or have you been quoted some training modules for tech CPD?

 

Simple set up eh....?

 

So you know how to configure Smart Groups, Apple Classroom, Managed Apple ID's, sync the MDM with Apple School Manager, certificate generation, app device licence assignment,managed apps, configure APNS correctly...I could go on.

 

The number of tech's on here who moan they don't get any CPD and then ditch any solution when it's included. The Jump Start is there to help train you.

[jgmitchell]

If that's for iOS only that is extortionate.....you should be quoted under £600.00 for that alone...or have you been quoted some training modules for tech CPD?

 

Simple set up eh....?

 

So you know how to configure Smart Groups, Apple Classroom, Managed Apple ID's, sync the MDM with Apple School Manager, certificate generation, app device licence assignment,managed apps, configure APNS correctly...I could go on.

 

The number of tech's on here who moan they don't get any CPD and then ditch any solution when it's included. The Jump Start is there to help train you.

 

 

That was just for iOS management. And yes, the topics you mentioned we could do ourselves. No more training modules, just the jumpstart.

When I queried this with a JAMF representative, it wasn't even topics as advanced as those above. It was the real basic stuff that we have already set up in profile manager.

[Brimstone]

That quote was a total rip off then as I said the charge should be under £600.00 as it's only a remote session, not on site.

 

Jamf don't sell direct they have resellers, if they knew they were charging this they would get a telling off.

Edited April 5, 2019 by Brimstone

[TomPearceGeek]

That quote was a total rip off then as I said the charge should be under £600.00 as it's only a remote session, not on site.

 

The iOS Jumpstart is about that much as far as I can tell. We have been quoted 6k+vat for our Mac, iOS and tvOS onsite jumpstart which includes a setup period and then a bit of training to get staff up to speed on the basics of managing through Jamf as far as I am aware.

[Brimstone]

Sigh...

 

An iOS Jump Start is just that, iOS only NOT macOS and costs under £600 and is made up of 2 x remote sessions, Jamf do not come on site for iOS only.

 

If you include macOS, iOS then this is a 3 day Jamf on site configuration, which explains why it is so much more.

[TomPearceGeek]

Back on subject!

 

We are lacking a little on the Airwatch side of reviews currently. Does anybody out there in education use it? We know it's primarily aimed at enterprises rather than the education market, but there must be people out there using it!

 

PS I work with the OP

[MicrodigitUK]

Back on subject!

 

We are lacking a little on the Airwatch side of reviews currently. Does anybody out there in education use it? We know it's primarily aimed at enterprises rather than the education market, but there must be people out there using it!

 

PS I work with the OP

 

We have used Airwatch with our Macs for the past 3 years. It’s OK but in our shared environment macs linked to AD as well as MDM it has had some problems. We can only set device policy’s as user policy’s have issues applying in Airwatch shared user mode for macOS this is due to a bug in there WorkspaceOne agent that has been there for 3years. I have had a ticket open for that issue with AirWatch for over 2.5 years. Basically the agent uses a device certificate in the users keychain (Not the device Keychain). So next user logs on and the agent is broken As user has a new key chain and the agent needs manually reconnecting. It requires the agent for user based profiles and deployment of apps. So basically we have a 50% functioning Apple system. I’m sure it would work fine if you had all your macs one-to-one. But unfortunately I cannot recommend AirWatch for a shared device set up used in most schools. Maybe they might fix the bug before I switch to another MDM solution but seeing as it has taken 2.5 years so far I doubt that very much.

[MicrodigitUK]

Also for not fixing a bug for 2.5 years. They still continue with annual price rises getting to the point where it now cost me more than double that it did 3 years ago for the same amount of devices. And for our money they still haven’t fixed the issue. Also on a side note this year’s renewal they forgot to contact us or our preferred partner until six months after the renewal was due demanding we paid or they were going to erase device data In their first email communication when they were the ones who forgot to contact us for the renewal.

[MicrodigitUK]

On a side note AirWatch works perfectly for iOS devices, So there is a positive.

[TomPearceGeek]

On a side note AirWatch works perfectly for iOS devices, So there is a positive.

 

I don't suppose you happen to use it for Android devices do you? We are looking at ONLY using android for our few android devices. All Apple Gear is going into Jamf.

[MicrodigitUK]

I don't suppose you happen to use it for Android devices do you? We are looking at ONLY using android for our few android devices. All Apple Gear is going into Jamf.

 

No we only have one Android device so don’t use MDM with it.

 

On a side note Jamf have partnered with MS Intune for co management. So have you considered Intune for your Android devices. We are considering in Intune to replace Airwatch as licensing costs are cheeper. Jamf is defiantly the way to go for Apple devices.

[TomPearceGeek]

WE weren't overly impressed with Intune when we had a snoop around in it. So far, on an Airwatch demo we were VERY impressed with what it can do, especially up against Mobile Iron Free which EE currently provide to us. There are only a handful of Android Phones that we are going to manage, and it's only for an overhead view of the android devices rather than a full deployment program etc.

[lfowler]

Also on this it would be interesting to hear how Airwatch works with non Android Enterprise compared to Android phones that have enterprise. Our Android devices are cheap and cheerful and are not enterprise but are on 7.0 and up. I have noticed that some features are not supported already in a current trial... Edited April 18, 2019 by lfowler