Why Apple MDM is a business investment, not a cost

While you ponder moving to Apple when you replace aging Windows 10 machines, please note that effective device management solutions can unlock your business, not just through enhanced deployment and security, but by delivering the kind of computing experiences your employees are already familiar with.

Using these solutions, it’s possible to have a device arrive at an employee’s location and for them to be able to set up, log in, provision, and secure their new device with nothing more than use of a Managed Apple ID.

Device management is an investment, not a cost

When the worker enters that ID, the device will automatically install and deploy device management; it will set up its authorization, network access keys, and applications; and within a very short time be ready for use. To the employee, the experience will feel precisely as if they were setting up their very own Mac, iPad, or iPhone. It will be just as familiar.

Familiarity in this case breeds content. 

All the data shows that when employees are allowed to use tech they already like using, they become more content in their roles. Engagement and productivity improves, and the people you struggle to hire stick around for longer. 

Why does the tech make a difference? 

In this case the easy answer is the obvious one: if you think about your own role, to what extent has tech entered it? For most of us, digital technologies continue to occupy a greater and greater space within our working lives, to the extent that for many people in many roles, the experience they have at work is, more or less, completely digital. If that is the case — that your work has become completely digital — then logically it must follow that the better the digital employee experience (DEX) becomes, the better your work experience becomes.

What happens when you are having a good work experience? You end up being happier. It’s the same for your employees.

That’s not to say that tech can completely transform anyone’s work experience, of course — you need all the other things to be in place: salaries that reflect your effort and are regularly enhanced, a little recognition, empathy, and support. You need managers dedicated to the welfare of their teams; you need autonomy, role progression, and all the other traditional management tools we recognize to be the hallmarks of a good company to work for. But having the right tech… well, having the right technology helps.

Securing the endpoints

Empowering your teams is one way in which good tech can unlock your business. Security is another. For reasons that seem unclear to me, security and IT seem to have evolved along different paths.

That may be true for Windows, given the seeming need to invest deeply in security to protect the basic stack. That’s much less true for Macs and other Apple devices, as those systems are built with security (and accessibility) baked in from the start — but you still need to keep your deployed systems secured. 

That’s made a little more complex with the evolution of mobile technologies. Mobile devices (including MacBooks) exist beyond the traditional security perimeter and need to be seen as endpoints for their own protection. 

The best way in which you can deliver endpoint protection is to embrace device management solutions that also support endpoint security systems. With those, it becomes possible for that new computer delivered fresh out the box to your remote employee to be immediately protected by both new and traditional protections. Virus checkers, network access controls, Virtual Private Networks, etc. can all be activated and installed from the day the worker opens the box. So too can switched-on endpoint management protections, including Declarative Device Management (DDM) and zero trust. 

Those last two solutions provide fairly effective ways in which your business can protect against the use of Gray IT, by blocking unwanted applications, websites, and services (such as saving to an external drive) from use. They also help ensure the person using the device is who they say they are, the device is what it claims to be, and the permission is not being made from a location you have no one working from.

Those decisions don’t really interrupt the DEX, as the limitations only impact those using things they should already know to be forbidden under company policy. 

What about artificial intelligence? 

To be honest, the same things apply. 

We all recognize that AI will unleash its own new era of ‘business efficiency,’ but we also know that in many cases sharing of confidential data with public AI systems is unacceptable and probably forbidden under data protection regulation, particularly in financial and health services. 

With a good device management system, it’s pretty easy to enable those AI systems that are approved under company policy while putting barriers in place against use of the rest. That’s a great way to enable limited use of AI to promote business efficiency without placing your business data (or reputation) at risk. 

Device management is a business investment

I could go on, but hopefully this smattering of examples helps illustrate the extent to which device management should be seen as a business investment and not just as a business cost. 

MDM makes it possible to unleash business efficiency, boost DEX, and engage positively with new technologies. And the big takeaway is that all of these systems, each and every one, are available to you right now if you choose to move your business across to Apple’s platforms — which most surveys show your employees prefer using anyway. Enjoy your weekend.

Follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, and Mastodon.