Secure, Cloud Mac® Management

As Macs® infiltrate organizations, many IT admins are looking for a secure, cloud Mac management solution. After all, an increase in Mac adoption has brought along with it a 72% increase in productivity and happier end users, so it’s safe to say that Macs are here to stay. However, IT has had a challenging time managing Mac users and systems because system management solutions haven’t kept up with the times.

The good news is that there is a new option that gives you control over the Macs themselves and the users that access them. Mac user and system management is an important part of the overall IT management process, so let’s take a look at why IT organizations have lacked a proper secure, cloud Mac management solution for so many years.

System Management was Dictated by the Windows Domination

IT organizations have lacked a Mac management solution because, historically, Windows® systems have dominated the enterprise. When Windows systems first started appearing in the workplace, Microsoft quickly released SCCM® (aka SMS) in 1994 and then Active Directory® in 1999 to provide IT admins with affective control over Windows devices and other on-prem Microsoft® resources. Microsoft created these system and user management solutions to only work with on-prem Microsoft products, and they actually worked pretty well. So, the Microsoft IT ecosystem was the go-to setup for some time.

Windows Domination was Busted by New IT Resources

Then, the IT landscape started to change as users started requesting Mac and Linux® devices more and more, web applications flooded the market, cloud infrastructure removed the need for on-prem data centers, and WiFi transformed the network. The consequence was that traditional IT management tools such as AD and SCCM struggled in this new environment. IT admins needed to look for separate solutions to manage resources like Macs or AWS® cloud servers, for example.

Because IT organizations often already had Active Directory, they would search out tools that would just support their Mac infrastructure. But, then they also needed another solution to manage their web apps and then (Read more...)