Enterprise security software Fleetsmith is now part of Apple. Fleetsmith is a suite of management and security services that allows users to oversee a fleet of Apple products, automatically managing apps, settings, and security preferences while implementing best practices for IT and security.
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Fleetsmith has always been focused on Apple products, and now Apple has purchased the company. Fleetsmith said that, "Our shared values of putting the customer at the center of everything we do without sacrificing privacy and security, means we can truly meet our mission, delivering Fleetsmith to businesses and institutions of all sizes, around the world."
Fleetsmith offers a free trial for up to 10 devices. Afterwards, you can opt for the free version of Fleetsmith or pay $8.25 per device per month for enhanced settings and more control over each device.
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As someone who worked for Apple B2B for 5+ years you're 100% right. Apple and business go together like Apple and Intel... they have to somewhat but they sure don't want to support it.It's probably go the way of most of Apple's other enterprise/educational services: Apple will only support Apple devices, while Google and Microsoft and other competitor's MDM supports all platforms, so no medium sized company or university will use it because they can't ensure or don't want to have a 100% Apple environment, and they don't want to do everything twice.
how do we get our work done with all the bloat and restrictions and permissions
This is not any kind of behavior a customer would expect from a partner; and if your vendor is not behaving like a partner...
It is still possible to manually create an app for assignment to a profile so you can push its install to devices. However, this requires constant updating by an IT resource to ensure the most recent versions of an app package is replacing the outdated version. The overhead created by this is HUGE, especially for SMBs with limited IT resources.
Overall, before this 'gutting', the service was fairly immature, lacking some basic admin functions and features. I was truly shocked when I read the announcement that Apple bought them. It will require a lot of heavy lifting (think FileVault encryption keys), but as soon as possible, and hopefully with some claw-back of our subscription fees by our legal department, we will move to an alternative, Addigy or jamfPRO.
Getting some security and management features in there in the future?