The Best Way to Deploy Mac at Work
Leveraging an Apple Certified IT Professional is the best way to deploy Mac in the workplace.
Introducing new technologies can be a big undertaking for small business owners who already wear many hats. The difference between a successful launch and a flop is leveraging expert knowledge to fit your organization's specific needs and use cases. Apple Certified IT Professionals have a proven track record of deploying a range of Apple products across the SMB.
We start by talking with stakeholders to understand their needs, pain points, and objectives. Defining the needs of each team and organization allows our team to specify the right solutions to meet your needs. Identifying pain points early on enables us to provide additional value by addressing those needs specifically. Lastly, setting clear objectives provides your team and ours with clear definitions of a successful launch.
Apple has a unique advantage in the marketplace. By designing their products from the ground up and tightly integrating their hardware and software, Apple can deliver a consistent experience across all of their products.
Management and security frameworks are built into the operating systems that power Apple devices. Your company needs to integrate these frameworks into purchasing, deployment, support, and lifecycle management processes to get the most out of these frameworks.
Including:
Your Apple Business Retail team or Authorized Apple Retailers
The Apple Business Manager platform to deliver apps, media, and volume licensing
You directory service to provide managed Apple ID accounts & seamless single sign-on experiences
You MDM platform to declare policies and restrictions that protect company data while respecting user privacy
When these resources are implemented correctly, your team can obtain the most value from the Apple ecosystem.
The Apple Business Retail Team
When you build a strong relationship with your local Apple Business Retail Team (or leverage our relationship), you gain an advocate inside of Apple. The Business Team works closely with your Certified IT Professional to understand your unique needs and build solutions to meet those needs. The Retail Business Team can also connect you with additional engineering and finance resources to aid in your project.
When you sign up for an Apple Business Account, you are able to access a custom online store. The store provides an easy way for IT teams to create proposals and finance teams to place and track orders.
In addition to the Retail Team, you can also purchase Apple products from Authorized Resellers. These resellers may be retail electronics stores or carriers like Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile. Products purchased through Apple Authorized Reseller can automatically be added to your Apple Business Manager account by the reseller.
Apple Business Manager
Apple Business Manager (and Apple School Manager) is the platform that orchestrates push notifications, identity providers, mobile device management servers, and volume-purchased licensing for apps, media, and books.
When you purchase products through the appropriate channels, they are assigned to your Apple Business Manager account. Devices assigned to ABM can automatically be enrolled into your mobile device management tool.
This process, called Automated Device Enrollment, allows for zero-touch deployment of Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Zero-touch deployment is critical for remote and geographically diverse teams. Devices can be shipped directly from Apple to users without the need to be preconfigured by your IT team. Saving time, environmental resources, and costs.
Mobile Device Management
The real magic begins when devices are enrolled in mobile device management tools like Intune or Jamf. Legacy companies relied on on-premises services and bindings to manage their fleet of devices. This practice required devices to be at the exact physical location or leverage finicky VPN solutions to communicate with a central server. These systems no longer meet the needs of modern, cloud-first, geographically diverse organizations.
Technological developments and changing business requirements have driven the need for mobile device management and declarative management policy.
Companies using MDM and declarative management can stay agile while protecting company data and respecting user privacy in an increasingly hostile digital world.
In traditional environments, management servers polled devices for their status. Evaluate compliance. Then, push policy from a central location to align those devices with the organization's policies. With modern declarative management, we turn this system on its head. The server defines compliance requirements, device restrictions, and policies for devices. The individual device aligns itself with the requirements and reports its status to the MDM server for reporting.
Identity and Federation
When Apple Business Manager and your company's identity provider (Microsoft Entra, Okta, or Google Workspace) are federated with Apple Business Manager, users are able to leverage a sign set of credentials across the Apple ecosystem in addition to other tools like email, chat, and collaboration.
You can also think of federation as two systems trusting each other and sharing the responsibility of authenticating and authorizing users and devices.
Once our identity provider is federated with Apple Business Manager and devices are enrolled in MDM, IT teams can restrict access to devices that meet a baseline security posture or threat level. This process is called Conditional Access (CA).
Conditional access dynamically determines threat risk to either grant or block access to users accordingly. Further protecting corporate data and intellectual property from bad actors.
Platform SSO
Finally, businesses can use Platform SSO to keep their Mac account passwords synced with their cloud accounts, creating a more unified account experience for users.
Leverage an Expert
Apple solutions extend beyond just the Mac. iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and HomePod can all help your team do their best work — personally and professionally. Working with a managed IT provider & Apple Certified IT Professional is the best way to deploy Mac at work.