Mosyle is the latest Apple-in-the-enterprise ecosystem services company to toll out a new device deployment workflow tool for Macs. I spoke with company CEO, Alcyr Araujo, who believes — as many do — that Macs are becoming a leader in the world of business IT.
What’s new from Mosyle?
Available now in beta to Mosyle Fuse customers, Mosyle Embark is designed to let IT teams enhance protection and compliance from the start when putting new Macs into use. It does so by guiding and informing employees during the configuration of their new Mac.
The company explains that Mosyle Embark launches immediately after Mac enrollment or the first Mosyle Auth authentication. Among other tasks, it checks to make sure the Mac has enough battery power to complete any installation, and then offers users a visualization that shows progress through every task the Mac is performing while set up takes place. Your Mac may be updating software, for example, or applying MDM settings. (End users even get a reminder not to shut down the Mac during the restart.)
While experienced Mac users almost certainly know roughly what’s happening during the setup and software installation process, new users know less.
Mosyle’s solution represents an understanding that in many cases, enterprise workers may only be at the beginning of their Apple journey and won’t necessarily know what seems obvious to more experienced users. That’s a particular challenge for remote workers making the migration for the first time, which is where Mosyle Embark will likely have the biggest impact. In the long run, it may help reduce the strain on IT during deployments as the Mac will tell the user what is going on.
Araujo: Apple enterprise adoption is accelerating
Araujo sees the deployment rate for Apple devices in the enterprise accelerating: “From small to large enterprises, we continue to see strong growth among all sizes of business customers. New small and medium customers continue to come in growing numbers month after month, while current customers continue to aggressively add new Apple devices to their fleets.
“Enterprise customers continue to expand their Apple fleets in ways that makes us believe we’re only now in the initial days of a migration era.
“Larger companies, after listening to employees’ preferences and learning about the sophisticated enterprise tools offered by Apple and specialized Apple endpoint software providers, are starting to refresh PCs with Macs, which should continue for the coming years. Ultimately, Macs will become the leader in enterprise.”
The ecosystem is growing
Apple continues to evolve its operating systems to cope with the needs of enterprise clients. Lockdown Mode may attract attention, but technologies such as those APIs that enable MDM services, deeper security protection, improvements in MDM support, Managed Device Attestation, and even Apple Business Essentials and improvements in the essential Apple Configurator — all are evidence the company’s focus on supporting these markets.
The industry seems to be taking note. Araujo said: “The evolution of the enterprise Apple ecosystem has been impressive, particularly over the past three years. Apple aggressively developed and released several improvements to critical enterprise needs, such as device management, authentication, and endpoint security.”
These improvements empower innovation from partners such as Moysle, Kandji, Jamf and others — offering a supporting ecosystem that now seems to be eclipsing what was in place before.
“Apple-specialized enterprise providers used all their expertise to build unique and integrated offerings for Apple devices that are now far superior, cheaper, and easier to use than any single solution or combination of solutions available for PCs,” he said.
“The introduction of User Enrollment years ago and the subsequent improvements made by Apple, combined with the impressive work done by top Apple-specialized enterprise providers, have created the perfect solution for the old BYOD problem. At this time, there’s no reason any company or employee shouldn’t feel comfortable using their Apple device at work.”
The evolution continues
“When you stop to think about how many iPhones are now in the pockets of employees all around the world, it’s astounding. “Combine that idea with the potential of those devices to help employees and companies achieve more with flexibility and defined boundaries, it’s hard to not be optimistic about the future of Apple and BYOD,” Araujo said.
“We expect that in a few years, almost every iPhone will be used at work in a safe and private manner.”
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