One thing I’ve been saying to buddies and colleagues over the previous few months is the pattern I see rising amongst IT professionals is the power to fireside a vendor at any given level. In case you get to a spot the place you’re primarily locked right into a vendor’s platform or product, you lose the higher hand relating to pricing when renewals come round. Even outdoors of pricing, if mentioned vendor is now not assembly your wants, you completely want the flexibleness to deploy substitute options. With iOS 17, Apple’s Return To Service MDM characteristic will get a pleasant improve that may make it simpler to alter to new machine administration distributors.
About Apple @ Work: Bradley Chambers managed an enterprise IT community from 2009 to 2021. By way of his expertise deploying and managing firewalls, switches, a cellular machine administration system, enterprise-grade Wi-Fi, a whole lot of Macs, and a whole lot of iPads, Bradley will spotlight methods through which Apple IT managers deploy Apple gadgets, construct networks to help them, and practice customers, in addition to tales from the trenches of IT administration and methods Apple may enhance its merchandise for IT departments.
Every part with machine deployments in 2023 should be absolutely automated. Sure, I mentioned every part. As organizations have expanded their utilization of Apple gadgets (Apple is on monitor to turn into the highest enterprise endpoint by 2030), handbook options don’t scale.
How Return to Service works in iOS 17
When machine administration distributors deploy Apple’s new RTS performance for iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, they’ll be capable of give prospects the choice to deploy a Wi-Fi profile with the command to wipe the machine. Utilizing your present MDM, you may ship the Erase Machine command and choose a Wi-Fi profile to make use of so the machine will robotically activate and re-enroll in your MDM. After sending the erase command to the machine with the Return to Service choice and the Wi-Fi profile chosen, the machine erases all knowledge on the machine and can robotically proceed to the Dwelling Display, enrolled and prepared for use. As a part of this course of, the beforehand chosen language and area are additionally utilized to the machine. If the machine is a mobile machine (iPhone or iPad with mobile), it is strongly recommended by Apple to protect the eSIM knowledge plan when erasing by deciding on the choice “Protect knowledge plan after the wiping.” This feature will make it simpler for finish customers to get again up and working.
Migrating MDM suppliers for iOS and iPadOS gadgets has historically been a difficult and time-consuming course of. After erasing gadgets with the previous MDM, IT directors should depend on Automated Machine Enrollment to enroll the gadgets on the brand new MDM. Nevertheless, this course of nonetheless required handbook steps, resembling deciding on a Wi-Fi community and typing the password. This usually led to IT directors asking customers to return their gadgets for the migration, which may take weeks of steady work to finish for big organizations.
Return to Service addresses this problem. With Return to Service, MDM migrations may be absolutely automated. A easy erase command despatched by the previous MDM will set off the method, and the machine may be robotically enrolled on the brand new MDM in only a few minutes. It is a actually game-changer for Apple prospects, making MDM migrations quicker, simpler, and extra environment friendly.
Alcyr Araujo, CEO Mosyle
If the machine is registered in Apple College Supervisor or Apple Enterprise Supervisor, you’ll wish to be certain the machine is pointed to the brand new MDM server forward of the erase. When you ship the erase instructions with the Wi-Fi profile, it’ll robotically activate, enroll, and get the person again to the house display with apps, books, and content material downloaded from the brand new machine administration vendor.
Wrap-up
Mosyle not too long ago launched a beta characteristic to start testing this characteristic. Because it’s a part of the iOS 17 MDM spec, it’ll seemingly come to all machine supervisor distributors this fall. Going again 10+ years, I’ve been speaking concerning the challenges of migrating MDM distributors outdoors of a brand new deployment, and with iOS 17 – Apple is making all the course of so simple as level and click on.
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